Guardian
by Lyricism
Summary: AU. Love is often a trial and error thing, especially when said love isn't accepted in general and said lovers are within the terror that is adolescence. KakuHida
1. Difficulties

Okay, back with the third and final addition to the Manicurist storyline-thingie! Nya, I'm ridiculously happy that you guys enjoyed Psychologist, so I sped up my creative muses with omelets and rainy days (don't ask) to bring you Guardian! Yay for breakfast food!

Ahem…anyway, this is a go-along story to Psychologist (my other fanfic), but you don't really need to read it for this fanfiction to make sense. These two have almost nothing to do with each other, except for a few references back and forth. But oh well, it still makes sense.

I warn you, Kakuzu may be OOC. But, that's the way I like him. XD He's a fun character to write that way.

Don't own Three Doors Down or the Goo Goo Dolls.

* * *

"_Sorry, Hidan, I'm moving." _

"_WHAT?!" _

Hidan's mind wandered as he stared out of the car window, watching the power lines swoop up and down. He groaned as he remembered what had happened the Friday before. Deidara, his best friend –since what, fourth grade?- had announced that he would be leaving Burbank and moving across the country the next day. Psh. The bastard. Waiting until the last day, totally surprising Hidan with the news. Here he was, heading to school, just to be alone. Great.

"Hidan? Hidan, honey, are you okay? You haven't said anything for the entire ride," a dark-haired woman said, keeping her eyes on the road as she drove.

He grunted. "Yeah, DeAnn. I'm fine," he answered routinely, moving his attention from the window to the back of her seat. DeAnn was cool, as far as foster moms went, but her inquisitive nature really ticked him off. Why did she care if he was quiet? "I'm tired, that's all."

She sighed and pulled up to the school. "You always say that, and it's always a lie," DeAnn replied, unlocking the car.

Hidan shouldered his backpack and let out the door. "I _am _tired," he argued, slamming the door shut. "Bye!"

XXXXXXXXXX

"So, you're new?" the bus driver asked, writing down something on a slip of paper.

Kakuzu sighed. No. He wasn't new; he had just moved to Burbank, but he had been going to school here for a while. "Uh, yes. I'm Kakuzu Taikii. I moved here a couple of days ago," he replied, choking down his sarcasm.

The driver motioned to the many rows of seats behind his own. "Alrighty, then, take a seat," he instructed.

The newcomer sighed, following the order. He absolutely hated this. Here he was, fresh out of Osaka, with limited (but functional) English, thrust into the Westerners' whacked-out culture; something he couldn't really grasp. It was okay for a girl to insult herself, but when someone else did it, they were immediately slapped. What sense did that make? And, to make things worse, people here followed stereotypes more than anything else. Not that Japanese people didn't do that, but it's a different story when the national language is your native tongue. In his current state, Kakuzu wasn't sure that he'd be able to correctly word a verbal comeback.

Picking an empty seat toward the back of the obnoxiously yellow vehicle, he pulled out his mp3 player and blasted some music. If there was one thing he liked about this culture, it was the music. Not the stuff that was basically just people talking with bass beats in the background, but the ones with instrumentals played by actual instruments and voices to die for.

In short, Three Doors Down and the Goo Goo Dolls.

Shifting his gaze out the window, he stared at his translucent reflection, then at the street, and then both. How was this entire thing going to blow over…?

When the bus screeched to a halt, Kakuzu filed out with the rest of the passengers. He figured he would follow the crowd until he knew what he was doing.

If only it were that easy. As he walked into the school doors, people of all shapes, sizes, and skin tones pushed and shoved past him, intent on getting to their belongings before the tardy bell rang. He sighed as he headed down the hall, looking for the locker assigned to him: 1379. Figures it had to be down at the other end of the hall.

Opening the door to his new metal storage container, Kakuzu accidentally hit someone standing at the locker next to his. "Hey, watch it!" a sharp voice scoffed.

Kakuzu closed his door a bit. "Sorry…" he apologized, watching as the other kid flipped him off. He was a very peculiar-looking person: unmistakable white hair, probably shoulder-length, slicked back, with an odd pendant hanging from a chain around his neck and light purple eyes. Were all Americans this bizarre-looking?

"What are _you _staring at?" he asked gruffly, slamming his locker shut. "Dude, fuck off." With that, he turned and walked away.

The other boy stood there, dumbstruck. He hadn't understood half of what that kid had just said to him, but something told him that it wasn't too courteous. Taking a few things from his locker, he closed it and headed to homeroom, where he was supposed to get his schedule. Maybe today would work itself out once he knew what he was supposed to do.

"So, you're Mr. Taikii, I presume," a gaunt, pale teacher said, getting down to Kakuzu's eye level as he sat down in homeroom.

Kakuzu blinked and nodded. "Yes, I am," he answered as politely as his vocabulary would let him.

The teacher scoffed, and handed him a folded-up piece of paper. "This is your schedule. Don't lose it."

Unfolding and reading it, the newcomer frowned. He couldn't read romaji. This would be a problem. Ugh, more things to worry about. "Um, miss?" he asked, raising his hand, "I can't read this."

The teacher, who had begun to walk away, turned around. "What, you're illiterate? Stupid?"

"Eh, no, but…I just can't read this," he replied innocently. "It's, um, not in my writing."

"Well, of _course _it's not in your writing. We type it up on a computer and give it to you here in America. What do_ you_ do?" she retorted, obviously trying to humiliate him.

Kakuzu turned a shade of pink. Try telling a sadistic teacher that you don't read Arabic runes without a full understanding of English. "But, I-"

The teacher, angered, slammed her hand down on the top of his desk. "But nothing! If you can only read your own handwriting, then you shouldn't be in middle school at all! So, you're obviously trying to mess with my head. WELL, IT AIN'T WORKING OVER HERE, YOU GOT THAT?!"

"Janice, calm down," another teacher soothed from behind here. He was tall, partially tan, and had an authoritive voice. "He's from Japan, remember? He means that he can't read the Arabic symbols that we use here in the States. They use different runes over in the Far East, right?"

Kakuzu nodded, though he hadn't quite picked up all of what the man had said.

"Unfortunately, we don't have all the computer programs we'd need to print out a schedule for you in kanji, so we'll just have to assign you someone who can guide you through your first week or so. By then, everything should be routine enough for you to handle." The male teacher scanned the classroom quickly. "Ah, Hidan," he said, pointing to the white-haired kid with whom Kakuzu had hit earlier that day, "you need some responsibility. How about you help Kakuzu here get to know this place? I'm sure you'd be the best person for the job."

Hidan grunted. "Yeah, sure," he replied, apparently reluctant. "Why not?"

XXXXXXXXXX

Promptly after Hidan had gotten home that day, he threw his backpack off to the side and stomped his way into his room. Plopping himself down on the bed, he groaned. Good god Jashin, had it been an annoying day. First, some know-nothing cunt slams his locker door on his (Hidan's) head. Then, that damned heathen vice principal tells him to follow around the know-nothing cunt. "You guys have the same schedule, so it won't be too hard to show him around." Tch. He expects Hidan to believe that? He's just trying to get him agitated because Deidara isn't there to back him up.

The mention of his friend in his thoughts made Hidan's blood boil. That damned new kid had sat in all of Dei's normal places, like he was trying to replace him. That was probably why Mrs. Olba had lost her cool back in homeroom; the blond loved pushing her buttons and tricking her into doing stupid things. The new guy had even had the nerve to take Dei's normal lunch seat. "I want to get to know you. Maybe we can be friends." Yeah, right. He wanted to piss Hidan off, was all. Irritation had a vessel, and it was a black-haired, seriously tanned, and tall with HUGE green eyes, especially for an Asian. Irritation also had a name, and it was Kakuzu.

Taking deep breaths to calm himself, he got out of bed and searched around under his bed for something. Feeling the cold metal in his hand, he pulled it out slowly, even religiously. The one thing that DeAnn could _never _know about…

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu slammed the door shut when he got home. "Tou-san! Dad, I'm home!" he yelled out, heading into the living room.

"Oh, you're home," his father replied from another room. "What took so long?" he asked, heading into the living room as well. "Was the bus late?"

"Iie, we just had a lot of stops to make. There's a lot of people on our route," Kakuzu answered, turning on the T.V. and channelsurfing. "School's pretty big, too. And diverse. I don't think I've ever seen that many ethnicities in one place before."

"Mm-hn. So, do you like it here?"

"Tch. No. Everything's screwed more than a cold onsen, and absolutely no one wants anything to do with me. How long are we going to stay here?" Kakuzu asked, as a yellow sponge came out of an odd-looking pineapple with portholes on the television screen.

His dad sighed. "As soon as I find them," he said after a period of silence. "As soon as I find and eradicate them."

* * *

Note: Whenever Kakuzu talks to his dad, it's all in Japanese. I put it in English simply because I don't speak Japanese fluently yet, and I know most of you don't, either.

Anyway, for those of you who've read my other AU fics, you can see that there's a change in the way I write. Instead of simply following one person around (i.e. I only wrote about what Kisame thought, saw, and speculated about in Manicurist, and I only wrote about what Sasori thought, saw, and speculated about in Psychologist), I'm telling about both Hidan and Kakuzu's points of view. Without doing that, this fanfic would be truly one-sided, and much less of a story. Please bear with me, and when you see the line of X's, it means there's a character change. Okay?

And, that brings me to the burning question- should I continue this one? I'm thinking about it, and although I have a rough storyline planned out, I don't know if it'd be of any interest to you guys. You tell me.


	2. No Tact

Second chapter! Wheeeee!

Yes, I decided to continue. With people asking for more, I dun want to say no! So…yeah, I got myself in gear and wrote out the second chapter. And I am absolutely LOVING where this story is going, though it is very fuzzy. Oh well.

Is it just me, or do other peoples' fingers not want to press the 'z' key like they're supposed to? (sweatdrop)

And, Hidan's 'pike' is a pole-stabbing thing used in religion, not a fish. Okay?

* * *

Kakuzu sighed as he continued channelsurfing. "Don't you think you're taking this anti-Jashinist thing a little too far? I mean, to uproot both yourself and your son going to a whole other continent just because you heard that there were Jashin people in the area? That seems pretty drastic."

His dad hit him over the head. "Of COURSE not! Look, what they did was unforgivable, and for that they need to be punished! Kakuzu, I can't understand why you'd even _question _me on this."

"Dad, that was seven years ago. I've gotten over it, and _I'm _the victim. And besides, just because one group of Jashinists is violent and malicious, it doesn't mean that they all are. _I _can't understand why you won't let this go," Kakuzu countered. _And, this entire thing is bigotry, _he added to himself.

Grabbing his son's hair, he hissed something in the boy's ear. "I will not let it go. Once I do away with them, we'll go back and you can continue with your happy little life in Osaka. Am I clear?"

Kakuzu sighed. This was a lose-lose battle. "Yes, sir."

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan stared down at the pike he held in his hands. Its smooth, cold texture felt familiar and calming in his hands, albeit exciting and energizing. Making sure his bedroom door was locked, he began with his sacred ritual.

He belonged to an underground religion, much like what some people might consider a cult. Named after is god, the Jashin religion was extremely strict and gory, requiring its members to perform elaborate sacraments which included stabbing themselves in the chest and lying in their own blood.

Hidan made a point to perform his rituals at least three times a week, lest he anger his beloved Jashin-sama. A death god was someone you did _not _want to anger.

He didn't mind doing this; at heart, Hidan loved his religion. It was the only thing that kept him sane at times, and it was all he had left of his biological family. Yet, it had been the cause of most of his strife.

It wasn't the religion itself, more of peoples' reaction to it. Being in foster care, he was often at the mercy of his caretakers. This also meant that he moved around a lot. Whenever a family was deemed unfit to take care of a foster child, or if they simply didn't want the child, all they had to do was call up the kid's social worker, and said kid would be sent to another foster home. And, this had happened to Hidan quite a lot in the past. Apparently, most people didn't like that he willingly stabbed himself, completely forgetting the freedom of religion amendment in the Bill Of Rights. (How messed up is that?) If he was ever caught during a ritual, it was a given that he would be out of there in a matter of days. Luckily, he had found a way to hide his worshipping, and he had managed to stay in Burbank for a few years. He'd like to keep it that way.

He pricked his thumb and drew a large version of his cult symbol, in blood, on his bedroom floor- a circle with an upside-down triangle inside. Standing in the center, he clutched the pike in his left hand and began chanting: "Great god Jashin, may this bloodshed appease you, and this sacrifice bring you glory. Putting my life in your hands, now and forever…" Continuing with the lengthy prayer, Hidan held the pike's sharp end to his heart. "Let the pain be my savior!" he half-yelled, pushing the sharp instrument into himself. Then, he blacked out.

When Hidan awoke, he was lying on the floor, a bloody mess. Glancing up at the digital clock on his nightstand, he was astounded by the time. 5:30. DeAnn would be home -back from work- in about 15 minutes. Shit.

Painstakingly picking himself up, he slumped his way into the bathroom and removed the pike. He held himself up by the edges of the sink as he inspected himself in the bathroom mirror. Hidan's face cringed with disgust at what he was. His normally white hair was tinged with red, matted and falling over his eyes. Glops of blood lay neutral on his cheeks and the underside of his chin, and the fact that he was panting added to the horrific image.

Taking his clothes off, he stepped into the shower and turned the cold tap all the way up. Cold water was always best for after rituals: it rinsed any stray blood off while reminding you not to stay in too long, otherwise risk unclotting the blood and inadvertedly bleeding yourself to death.

After his shower, Hidan took a wet washcloth and immediately wiped up the spilt blood on the floor. Although DeAnn never really came into his room, it was always good to get rid of any lasting evidence. And, should she get a sudden interest in Hidan's stuff…it was just best to be careful.

Sighing as he finished, he threw himself onto the rolling chair at his desk. Now, to get that homework out of the way.

The next day at school, Hidan went to his locker at the beginning of the day as usual. Kakuzu was already at his, rummaging through the confines of what used to be Deidara's storage spot. He didn't know why, but seeing the new kid where his old friend used to be infuriated him. How dare he use the same space that Dei had! Gritting, Hidan bit down on his anger. The last thing he needed was a school fight.

Getting his stuff, he felt the pressure boiling up inside of him. Anger, hate, and sour loss mixed together, leaving Hidan with a loathsome taste in his mouth. After a minute or so, he lost it.

"Hey, Hidan?" Kakuzu asked, "do you know what the math homework was?"

That did it. Everything he was trying to keep inside, everything that was swirling around in his head, exploded. Slamming his locker door shut, Hidan glared. "No. And if I did, I wouldn't tell you. Know why? Because you're a foreign little bastard who's bent on replacing my best friend!!"

The other boy gave him a confused look. "Um, I just want to know-"

"Yeah, sure! That's just what you say. But, in reality, you're a selfish, lying cunt!" The mixed emotion of confusion and miscomprehension that Kakuzu was giving off fueled Hidan's anger all the more. "And them you go around pretending that you don't understand English! TO try and get sympathy! How pathetic! Know what I think? I think that you're A MOTHER-FUCKING HEATHEN WHO SHOULD JUST CRAWL INTO A DITCH AND DIE!! THERE IS _NO _WAY THAT YOU'RE TAKING DEIDARA'S PLACE, SO FUCK OFF AND GO KILL YOURSELF!"

The other boy took a step back, obviously surprised at Hidan's sudden outburst. Though his hair covered most of his eyes, it was apparent the he was blinking back tears. "Y-you didn't need to shout…" he stammered, before taking off to homeroom.

The white-haired kid was appalled at this. First he tried to take Dei's place. Now he'd shedding crocodile tears just to make Hidan feel bad? Disgusting. "Yeah, you just keep on running, you fucking heathen!"

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu cursed himself as he ran down the hall. Why did he have to be so damn sensitive?! He hadn't really picked up all of what Hidan had said, but what he did understand hurt. _Crawl into a ditch and die! Go kill yourself! _Wow, he knew that Hidan didn't particularly like him –they were forced to communicate by a teacher- but what had he do to deserve _that_? Things were confusing here.

Sitting in the very back of the class, he put his head down and sobbed softly. Why him? Why him…

Suddenly, he felt a tap on his shoulder. "Hey, are you okay in there?" a male voice asked.

Kakuzu lifted his head to find a spiky, orange-haired boy with multiple nose and ear piercings smiling at him. Wiping his eyes, he replied as calmly as he could. "I'm fine."

His smile cracked wider. "Oh, no, you ain't," he said, turning his attention to the front of the classroom. "Where you the one that Hidan was yelling at just now? The mother-fucking heathen?"

The other boy nodded, remembering the name from the white-haired kid's rant. "Yes. He, er, got mad when I said about the math homework," he replied softly.

"Hey, do yourself a favor and just don't take it personally, okay?" the orange-haired kid suggested, returning his gaze to Kakuzu. "He's just upset right now. See, his best friend, Deidara, moved right before you came. Follow?"

Kakuzu blinked. He _had _followed, for once. "Yeah. Continue."

He nodded. "Okay, so Deidara and Hidan were, like, reaaally close. They always sat together, had inside jokes and tortured the teachers tag-team style whenever possible. Ergo, when you show up and start sitting in Dei's normal spots, Hidan somehow gets it into his head that you're trying to replace Deidara, even though you're just trying to be friendly. Give it a day or two and he'll come to his senses." He finished with a giggle.

The black-haired kid nodded with comprehension. "Oh. Now I get it," he said definitely, "but why are you laughing?"

"So I'm a sadist. Sue me."

XXXXXXXXXX

_Okay, so all I need to do is regroup that, round to the nearest hundredth, and multiply by the reciprocal and…no. That's not working. _Hidan tapped his pencil on his desk as he worked on his math homework that night. Algebra had never been his strength. Neither had geometry, graphing or integers, but that was a different story. He didn't even know why he had to learn all this stuff. He could add, subtract, multiply and divide. What more did a person need? Cooking skills, he guessed…

Letting his thoughts wander, his attention turned to Kakuzu. The green-eyed cretin had made him totally flip out earlier that day. Psh. It was _his _fault for instigating.

But, he just couldn't shake the picture from his mind - standing there, crying, and all-around confused. It was all just a ruse, right? Kakuzu was just acting. Yes, he was. But…Hidan _had _been pretty unfair. Kakuzu didn't know about Deidara, or about his closeness with him. And, he probably wasn't pretending about not understanding English all that well. He may not have understood most of what he had ranted about. Also, Hidan DID have a bad habit of taking things too personally and too seriously. Not to mention his talent for picking on certain things about a person when he got mad.

Sighing, he made a decision. He'd have to apologize.

* * *

I _told _you Kakuzu was going to be pretty OOC. But, in a way, he isn't. This is probably why he's all "Money is everything and you don't matter" later on in life. Poor Kuzu-kun. (glomps Kakuzu)

Anyways, I somehow get the feeling that my writing's deteriorating. I guess it's the lack of single-point-of-view-ness, but I don't know.


	3. Ugokimasen, Jashinto

Omj, I am SOOOOOO sorry for the lateness of this chapter! It's just that, y'know, with school starting, dance class eating up all my free time, and that stupid volunteer work I have to do, I barely have time to breath, much less write/publish.

But, I will try to update at least twice a month, more if the mood strikes me. I know it seems like a lot less than the every-other-day updates I had with the other fics, but school is school. I hope that you won't mind being a bit more patient with me and waiting for continuations. Separation makes the heart grow fonder, right?

* * *

_Pain. Sorrow. Misery. _

"_Dad? Dad, what's going on?" _

_Slash. Slash. Blood everywhere. _

"_D…Daddy? What is th-"_

_Cough. More blood. _

_Pain. Sorrow. Misery. _

_Cold blade, sharp edge. _

_Slice-_

Hidan sat up abruptly, already in a cold sweat. He had been dreaming. Thank Jashin. Breathing heavily, he grasped his head, sorting out reality for fantasy. _It's been a while since I've had that dream,_ he thought, laying back down. _Wonder why it came back…_

He sighed, hoping that this wasn't some sort of prophecy. They normally weren't, but one never knows.

At school the next day, it was surprisingly hard to get into even the slightest conversation with Kakuzu. Not only had he left from his locker way before Hidan had arrived at school, but he avoided the white-haired boy altogether, making it difficult for him to apologize like he had planned. As if it wasn't hard enough for him already.

Laying his head down during sixth-period study hall, Hidan had given up on talking to the new kid. It was apparent that Kakuzu wanted nothing to do with him. Hidan couldn't exactly blame him; he had really said some upsetting things the other day. But, still, he should at least let him say sorry. That much was common courtesy.

Almost asleep, he felt a slight push on his elbow. Looking down, he saw that it was a folded-up colored piece of paper. A note, obviously. Opening it underneath his desk so as not to let the teacher see, he read the left-slanted scrawl.

_Kkzu is ignoring u, right? u really hurt his feelings the other day, I don't think he's 4given you. Got an explanation for urself? –Pein _

Hidan replied in his own scritch-scratch writing.

_I don't like ppl who try to be replacements, or ppl who stick around when theyre unwanted. Kkzu was both, and I lost my cool. Ive been tryin to apologize all day. He IS ignoring me, and I cant really hold it against him. I was mean and all that shiz. Y do u care, anyway? _

A few seconds later, he got an answer:

_b/c I kno that u guys could be good friends/a good team, and I'd hate 4 that 2 go 2 waste. And, somethin tells me that ur goin to need each other. ;) Don't reply. _

Hidan was confused after reading the end of Pein's note. He had never really met him, and from a social recluse like Pein, it was EXTREMELY rare to receive a message. After all, he normally blended himself into the background and only talked to his blue-haired girlfriend. Why the sudden interest in Hidan and Kakuzu? Weird.

Hidan's chance came in last period science class, when the gruff, stout teacher announced that they would be doing a project in pairs: a poster about one of a few biomes that shed had picked. The teacher had also picked the partners, and thankfully, Kakuzu and HIdan were a group. There was no way he could ignore him now.

XXXXXXXXXX

As the last bell rang, students filed out into the vast hallway; all except Kakuzu. He had lingered around to talk to the teacher privately, to see if he could change partners. The black-haired kid knew all too well that Hidan would rather sleep in an asp pit than work on a project with him. Well, that was life for you.

He was truly surprised, though, when he felt a hand on his shoulder, stopping his advancement to the teacher's desk. Turning around, he saw Hidan behind him. "Hey, what are you doing?" the bizarre-looking kid asked.

Kakuzu grunted. "I think you'll be happy to know that I'm requesting a partner change," he scoffed. "Sorry, but I didn't kill me like you'd wanted."

Hidan's gaze shifted downward. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about," he said, a sad undertone in his voice. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said, okay? I just get really sensitive when things around me change, and…well, I guess I deal with it by getting angry. I said some really nasty stuff, but I didn't mean them. I know I hurt you, and I'm sorry. Truly, sincerely sorry." He took a breath as a shy smile stretched across his face. "No hard feelings?"

The other boy was both stunned and confused. So many unknown words…but, he had understood that two most important ones. "Er, okay," he said, knowing that it was probably an acceptable answer. "You're, um, good…does this mean that you don't want a partner change?"

The white-haired kid shook his head. "Nope, I'm totally fine with it. All I want to know is why we have to do a poster on the tundra. Absolutely _nothing _lives up there," he said, referring to the biome that they were assigned a little bit beforehand. "Crazy, right?"

"Yeah. There's no way we can do it entirely of polar bears."

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan tapped his foot impatiently the next afternoon as he rang Kauzu's doorbell. The black-haired Asian had invited him over the day before, on account of that damn biome project. Why the hell did they need to learn about biomes, anyway? It's not like anyone was _that _curious about them, unless they were one of those weird environmentalists.

Kakuzu opened the door a couple seconds later. "Oh, hi, Hidan," he greeted, showing the other boy inside. "Um, welcome to my house!"

It was big, bigger than Hidan's house, at least, and apparently two-storied, due to the staircase in the far right corner. The walls were adorned with many a cross, revealing Kakuzu's religion. "So, you're Christian?" he asked quietly, aimlessly wandering around the great room that his partner had led him into.

The other boy nodded. "Yup. Nothing really special," he said, moving a coffee table to the side. "We can work on the poster here."

The white-haired kid shrugged. "Sure," he agreed, throwing the poster board and markers he had brought into the space that he had just created. "Let's start, shall we?"

About a half-hour into the boys' work, Hidan heard a low, male voice call out. "Kakuzu, tabemono was anata no tomodachi o teikyou suru dewa ka?" it rumbled.

Kakuzu's eyes shifted back and forth. "Ee," he answered in an uncertain voice. "Uh, do you want anything to eat?" he inquired in a hushed voice. "Please say yes. My dad'll get mad, maybe, if you don't."

Hidan srugged. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. So long as it isn't fish."

The other boy nodded. "Okay, wait, here," he said as he hurried out of the room and into the kitchen.

Kakuzu had been gone for a few minutes when Hidan heard murmuring coming from an entranceway. Shrugging it off, he continued to meticulously color a penguin. When footsteps creaked across the carpeted floor, he dismissed them as background noises, absorbed in his work. It wasn't until he had a gun pointing at him that he took everything seriously.

He looked up to find a shiny, silver revolver aimed at his forehead. Behind it stood a man who shared Kakuzu's black hair and green eyes, with his mouth twisted into an ungodly sadistic grin. "Ugokimasen, Jashinto," he growled.

The boy's eyes widened at the works. Although he didn't speak Japanese, he knew what they meant. Don't move, Jashinist. Oh, shit. Hidan's heart quickened as a bloody memory flashed before his eyes.

_Men, clad in head-to-toe black, wore three kanji on the fronts of their shirts. The symbols for three words that would haunt Hidan for the rest of his life- pain, misery and death. _

_A young boy clung to the shadows of a wall as he watched odd intruders advance across the small courtyard near his Jashin temple home. Huge knives –or were they swords? Though it was very odd to have a sword in modern times, it could happen- were drawn from their belts and immediately utilized in cutting the people in the courtyard mercilessly. Because they had been praying, none of them foresaw the attack. _

_He stared in horror as the men stopped impaling the adults and began to wander like lost kittens. If he was lucky, they wouldn't notice him, and he could hide somewhere until the grown-ups were healed by Jashin-sama. _

_But he had no such luck. A hand that seemed to come from nowhere pushed his shoulder up against the wall behind him. Yelping on impact, a metal blade was held to hid head. "Ugokimasen, Jashinto," a deep voice rasped, cutting across the boy's forehead. The man continued talking in a language that the kid didn't understand, pausing every so often for a few seconds and then slicing more. This continued until another intruder yelled at him. _

_With a chuckle, the first man glared with manic glee. "So, you speak English?" he asked. _

_The little boy nodded as much as the knife's grip would allow. This was scary. He wanted to run, escape…but he was only seven. If he made a break for it, they'd catch up. He definitely couldn't talk his way out of this. As fear washed over his body, he gulped. This wasn't good. _

"_Okay, then. Listen to me, and you'd better answer this time. Where is the boy? Black hair, green eyes. We know he's here." _

"_I-I don't know," the boy managed to say, almost choked in fright. _

_The man pressed on his knife harder. "Don't lie!" he screeched, about to throttle the seven-year-old. _

_Tears collected in the corners of the kid's eyes. "There aren't any kids here!" he screamed. "I'm the only one!" _

_Releasing the boy, the intruder scoffed. "Tch. You're no help, and not worth killing. Whatever." With that, the squad of weird people retreated, leaving the stench of blood and flesh in their wake. _

_The kid breathed heavily as he sorted out the situation. Okay, so guys that he had never seen before had just invaded and hurt everyone. But, Jashin-sama would heal all their wounds, so there was no reason to worry. Everyone would be okay in a matter of minutes. Right? _

_Walking through the once-beautiful courtyard, he knew that something was wrong. Everyone should be at least remotely healed by now, and able to move around. No one was getting up, though, and most of them were still bleeding, despite the fact that the blood should've clotted a while ago. Not one of them was breathing, either. They were dead. But that was impossible. You can't kill a Jashinist with brute strength. The body would regenerate itself with Jashin-sama's help. _

_He almost retched when he found our why nobody was moving. Formaldehyde. Its sharp, overpowering scent was camouflaged by the coppery smell of blood, but it was definitely there. The people weren't healing because the formaldehyde had stopped their bodies from working. From a kid's point of view, the boy couldn't believe it. He had witnessed a mass murder. _

Hidan began to shake as he returned to reality in the blink of an eye. The gun was still poised to shoot, and the person behind the trigger was still smiling maniacally. No. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be…

He had pretty much become nerve-wracked when Kakuzu's voice echoed through the room. "Tou-san!" he yelled, pushing the firearm away from Hidan's brow. "Nan surite imasu ka?!" He sounded both angry and insulted.

The man snapped at him, saying something in a low tone, and realigned the gun, only to get it smacked out of his hand. "Iie, boku wo kiki_masu! _Hidan ga ore no tomodachi da! Teki de _nai!!" _All through the yelling, the black-haired kid made subtle gestures for the other boy to get the hell out of there before the man reverted his attention back.

Hidan happily obliged, making a mad dash for his house. There was no way he was going to stick around that hellhole for more than a few minutes. And there was no way he'd let history repeat itself.

* * *

Ah, my Japanese is horrible. Please bear with it.

Translation:

**Dad- Kakuzu, did you offer your friend any food? (Direct translation)**

**Kakuzu- (shifty eyes) Yes…**

**Kakuzu- Dad! What are you doing?! **

**Dad- **_**Listen, he's a Jashinist. He needs to die. **_

**Kakuzu- No, **_**you**_** listen to ME! Hidan is my friend! NOT an enemy! **

Ah, so Hidan's history is revealed! There's more of that to come, so please be patient!

Reviews make this story _so _much better. Not only do they help me write faster, but they suggest things to me for the storyline without even knowing it! So, keep up the reviews and we shall have one of the best fanfics in history in our hands! XD


	4. Dear Father

Chapter four, right on schedule! XD Oh, am I good or WHAT?!

Haha….yeah. I totally botched up Hidan's history, hopefully this chappy makes up for it, and if it doesn't, maybe chapter 5 will. I dun know at this point in time.

On another note, the title of this chapter shows how much of a Sumtard (Sum 41) I am. I loved their newest CD, and the title of the song "Dear Father" fit so well with this chapter that it was embarrassing.

* * *

Hidan ran. There was no other way to put it. He smacked his feet into the gray, asphalt-covered ground alternatively, propelling himself down the almost endless city streets. Although the night's cold temperature stung at his skin, he kept on going. And going. And going. To where, he didn't know. He just wanted to get away.

He found himself in one of the city's small playgrounds, the one near his elementary school, when he finally came to his senses. Relieved, in a way, he headed toward the once-tall slide, which was now only a few feet over his head, and situated himself at the top. Here, he could be alone. No crazy Jashinist hunter, no Kakuzu, no anything. Just him and his thoughts.

Hidan looked down at the unchanging park scenery, bathed in a rather eerie dim light that brought back fond memories of when he first came to Burbank. It was here, in the very spot that he was sitting in, that he met Deidara and thus made the boy one of his best friends. On the first day of fourth grade, when he had just moved to the Californian city, he sat on top of the slide during recess, much like what he was doing now. Deidara had begun yelling at him to get off, and that he wanted a turn, and lots of other stuff, but Hidan had refused to move. Frustrated, the blond tried climbing up the chute to get to the peak, but the white-haired boy had refused to let him up once again. Sliding back down, Dei persisted, and soon the two had made a game of it. Though trivial, it was fun at the time, and soon they became inseparable. Almost, anyways.

Glancing up at the moon, a smile stretched across Hidan's once fear-stricken face. It was a full moon; all the rocks, craters, and basins that adorned the rock-in-the-sky were fully visible. Big, pretty and illuminating. Not only that, but it made his hair shine brightly with the silver radiance. His and his dad's…

"_Hey, Dad, your hair's all shiny!" a six-year-old Hidan exclaimed as he took a walk with his father one night. Clouds had departed the sky that evening, leaving the moon open for lighting the grassy scenery. _

_His dad, who was aware of this, smiled. "Ha, I know. It's the full moon, see?" he asked, pointing up to the huge silver disk in the inky blackness. "The light from it makes my hair really reflective." _

_The little kid stared in awe. "The moon can do that?" he inquired incredulously, gaping upwards. _

"_Well, of course." Chuckling, he plated with Hidan's loose, stringy hair, the exact same hue as his own. "You know, your hair is shiny, too." _

_Hidan beamed largely. "Really? Can I see?" _

_Laughing a bit more, his dad led him down the dirt path that led to their Jashin shrine home. "Maybe next time," he promised. "Right now, I know a little boy who really needs to get his sleep." _

"_Hey! I'm not little!" _

Ah, what a fond memory. When it came to his father, all Hidan had were good notions and connotations. Since he never really met his mom, his father was his sole parental figure, and because of that, his hero. His dad had always treated him with kindness, respect, and a subordinate-yet-equal attitude, which Hidan loved and missed. Though DeAnn was somewhat the same, always asking his opinions on things and taking them into consideration, it would never be the same. No one could replace his father.

Hidan's dad had bee a Jashin priest, ergo he (Hidan) had lived in a Jashin shrine for most of his early life. He guessed that this was why he was so committed to his religion, and why he was so offended when people took their god's name in vain. Religious things should be regarded as sacred and honorable, he thought, and therefore people should treat them as so. However, in today's sacrilegious society, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.

His life had been perfect for the first seven years- loving father, safe environment, the works. So, naturally, when things fell apart, Hidan felt the repercussions extremely hard. And how existence as he knew it crumbled-

He shook his head to prevent from reminiscing. He had promised himself that he wouldn't think about it, ever. Never, ever, ever. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, the exact same images flooded his mind all the same…

_Hidan stood in horror at the gruesome scene in front of him. Bodies, everywhere. No one moving, no one breathing. Blood spilled everywhere, painting the once-green grass a sickly shade of maroon. It almost stung his eyes. Whoever those guys were, they sure didn't leave a job unfinished. _

_Weaving through the battle site, he choked as he recognized the people on the ground. Countless priests and priestesses. Dead. Murdered. How wrong was that? You don't just go around killing infantry. It's just wasn't done. _

_He almost threw up when he got to the far end of the landscape. Laying there, white hair strewn about and with several deep cuts in the face, it was borderline impossible to tell who it was. But he knew; only two people at this temple had that shade of hair color. _

_Kneeling down, his voice cracked with sadness as he spoke. "D-Dad?" he asked innocently. "Dad, are you…okay?" _

_No answer, so Hidan tried again. "Dad, you know it's not good to perform rituals out in the open. Come on, wake up so we can go inside and finish it." _

_His father's body lay there, unmoving. No flitter of the eyelids, no rising of the chest, and no response. He knew what this meant, but refused to believe it. It couldn't be. It just couldn't. "Dad," he insisted, shaking his parent's shoulder. "Dad, come on! Wake up! Come on, wake up…" the little boy said, beginning to sob. "Wake up…"_

Hidan took a deep breath when the recollection ended. How he hated that day. The day it all came crashing down. The day his life changed, indefinitely, forever. Hugging his knees, he laid his head down as tears trickled down his face. No matter what he did, he always wound up crying after that particular story. Maybe it reopened an emotional wound, or maybe he was still grieving. He didn't know; he didn't care. All he wanted was for the pain to stop. For things to go back to the way they were. For everything to agree with him again.

After a few minutes of controlled crying, he regained himself and slid down the slide. DeAnn would expect him home soon, under the impression that he was working on a project at Kakuzu's house. Since there was no way he was going to tell her about this little scenario and have to explain his entire history, he made haste in going home.

XXXXXXXXXX

"What the hell?!" Kakuzu demanded, after Hidan had left his house safely. "Okay, I know for a fact that you're not supposed to point guns at house guests, especially when said house guests are unarmed themselves!"

Kakuzu's dad picked his gun off the floor and hit his son on the head with the heel of his hand. "It doesn't matter if they're house guests or not," he said, outwardly irritated. "A Jashinist's a Jashinist, and they're all the same-"

"How do you know that?!" the boy yelled out, crossing his arms and glaring at his dad. "You don't know anything about Hidan! He could be a saint!"

"Kakuzu," the patriarch rumbled, towering over him as to strike fear, "you should feel the same way I do. Like you said, _you're _the victim."

Kakuzu rolled his eyes. His dad always stood over him when trying to be persuasive. It didn't work nowadays, since he had developed a sense of rebellion, as all teenagers do. "You're right," he agreed, "I _am _the victim. But that doesn't mean that I should go around blowing the heads off every Jashinist I encounter. Those people may have been a minority division or whatever. Haven't you ever heard the saying, 'Never judge a book by its cover?'"

His dad slapped his forehead. "You don't get it," he said, dragging his hand down his face. "All Jashinists are like that because it's what makes them _Jashinists._ It's their religion, Kakuzu. They worship death, suffering, and mutilation, and they're always trying to impose their beliefs on others because it's what their sect tells them to do. And-"

"There's no way to be completely sure!" the son protested, moving his arms around as he talked. "I'll have you know that Hidan hasn't said one word to me about his religion, and I doubt he ever will! I'm telling you, he's just a normal kid with normal likes and dislikes who just happens to be part of an underground religion. There's nothing dangerous about-"

"Shut. Up," his father commanded. Gesturing towards the staircase, he barked another order. "Go to your room."

Kakuzu shot his dad a dirty look before obliging. As much as he hated to, he had to follow his father's instructions. In this household, his word was law.

Slamming his bedroom door shut and throwing himself onto his bed, Kakuzu groaned. Ever since his parents had divorced, his dad had been oversensitive and paranoid about a lot of things. What he didn't get, though, was that Kakuzu didn't need all the extra protection and paranoia. He was thirteen and able to keep himself out of trouble better than most kids his age. It seemed that his father would never quite get it.

Sighing, he rolled over to face the wall and began to ponder something else. Why was he so protective of Hidan? Because it was the right thing to do. No one should get shot out of bigotry. But, no, that wasn't it. When he had been arguing with his dad, another sentiment was present. Something pushing his to defend the young cult member and make sure that he would go unharmed.

Shrugging it off, Kakuzu rolled over again and fell asleep. Some things are better thought about in daylight.

* * *

No cliffie this time. Sorry, guys. (Yeah, right. We all know that cliffhangers are the fanfiction reader's worst enemy.)

Uh, not much to say with this one, except that unencouraged authors do not write. Get it?


	5. Stop It!

Helloz:3

Okay, this chapter is a week early (so I schedule my own deadlines- if I didn't, I'd never get anything done) for two reasons: 1. I was encouraged, many thanks for that, and 2. I'm going to Washington D.C. on a school field trip and although I don't have school the day after we get back, Lord knows I'll be sleeping the entire day, and way too exhausted to stare at a computer screen the entire day. So, yeah, here's chapter 5.

Dedicated to Medicinal Biscuit, the former pepto. Congrats on getting an ffnet account and posting fanfics and all that jazz. XD

Don't own Linkin Park.

* * *

Hidan slammed the door as he entered his house. He was late. DeAnn would be would be furious; the last time he had dared to stay out past curfew, she had blown a gasket and then some. In self-defense, he made it look like he was mad at himself. She would probably go easy on him if he acted like he knew that what he had done was wrong.

But, he wasn't confronted at the front door like he had expected. He wasn't bombarded with loud "Where were you?!"s and "What do you thing you're doings?!"s like normal. In fact, he wasn't met with any type of disciplinary action at all. The house was silent.

At least, for a few seconds. As he stepped into his abode, wondering where his foster mother could be, laughter erupted from his kitchen. One voice was extremely feminine -that was definitely DeAnn- but Hidan also heard a male tone accompanying hers. Curious, he decided to do some teenage-esque spying: you walk by the room in which the subject is occupying, acting like you don't care, but in reality, you're watching the perpetrator through the corner of your eye. This method had worked for Hidan before –he considered his eyesight 20/20, especially when it came to his peripheral vision- but this time, the technique wasn't necessary. Namely because DeAnn had invited him into the kitchen.

"Oh, Hidan, you're home," she said, as the white-haired kid walked by the entranceway leading to his home eatery. "Come on in! I have someone I want you to meet."

Reluctant-looking, Hidan schlepped himself inside of the room. "Hey," he greeted, leaning against a wall, intensifying the 'I-really-don't-care-about-what-you're-about-to-show-me' attitude that all kids his age had. "Who's here?"

His eyes trailed around the birch cabinets, the circular table that matched, and the tile, until his gaze transfixed itself on a dark-haired, skinny man sitting at the counter. He wore a black-on-red Red Jumpsuit Apparatus t-shirt, some sort of shell necklace, and _really_ needed to shave. From the first impression he gave Hidan, he was a free-spirited, independent person who had a knack for improvisational comedy and an irresponsible record. Just the type of guy that DeAnn would be attracted to.

The guy at the kitchen counter smiled and waved. "Yo," he said, in a medium tone, "I'm Terrance. Nice to meet you. Hidan, right?"

The boy shrugged. "That's what they call me." His stare shifted downward yet again. "So…why're you here?" _Good god Jashin, _Hidan said to himself, _this guy is like a kid that never grew up. There's no way I'll be able to put up with that without totally blowing everything out of proportion. Maybe he's just here for a visit, and he actually lives a long way that-a-way, and won't come back ever again-_

"…my boyfriend," DeAnn finished, clapping her hands together.

Hidan snapped to immediate attention. He had gotten absorbed in his thoughts and hadn't realized that DeAnn had been talking. "Uh, what?" he asked, short of sounding intelligent.

She took a deep breath. "Hidan, this is Terrance. He is my boyfriend. We are dating. Going out. Together. Et cetera, so on and so forth. Got it now?" It was pretty obvious that she was losing her patience. The only thing that DeAnn really demanded was that you pay attention to her.

The white-haired boy blinked. This was unanticipated. "Oh," he managed to get out, dumbstruck. DeAnn had never mentioned that she had been seeing anyone. Biting his lip, he began to walk upstairs to his room. "Yeah, okay. I'll be locked away should I be needed." But, apparently, he wouldn't be needed anytime soon, since the two adults went right back to their conversation when he left the room.

Closing his bedroom door quietly, Hidan pressed a button on his boombox, and Linkin Park began blasting through his speakers. For some reason, this was the band that he would listen to whenever he felt violated, confused or otherwise. And this was exactly what he was feeling right now. Okay, DeAnn could have at least _told _him that she had a boyfriend, or have just told him that someone was coming over. That would've been enough. But no. She had to go and surprise him with a random band groupie sitting in his kitchen.

He groaned, sprawled himself out on his bed and began mouthing the words to the relatively emo song playing: _sometimes I need to remember just to breathe, sometimes I need you to stay away from me…_ As he continued with the lyrics, his mind wandered a bit. So, DeAnn had a boyfriend. That was great for her. But, seriously, what if they get married? That would mean that Hidan would get a foster dad, something that he didn't really want. Since he had never met his mom, it didn't bother him that he got a mom-replacement. That was okay. But, his dad had been his hero. There was no way he was going to let some scruffy-looking hoodlum just waltz into his life and play the father role. No way. Hidan's dad was much more of an important person than some Terrance would ever be.

No. He wouldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let some nobody take the place of the most important person in his life. No, no, no. Never.

Glancing over at the clock, he wasn't surprised at what it read. 10:30. He had spent a lot of time at the playground that night, and now he should sleep. Nothing's better to clear one's head than a good doze.

XXXXXXXXXX

_Giant figures enshrouded in shadows tower over me. _

_Something sharp pierces my right arm. _

_I'm being held by my left. _

_Laughter erupts from the group and something cold makes its way across my chest. _

"_No! Stop!" I cry out, hoping that they will adhere. _

_More laughter. They're laughing at me. More cold and stinging things go across my body. It hurts more than anything else ever has. _

"_Stop it!"_

Kakuzu awoke in a cold sweat, panting. Sitting up, he grasped his sheets in a tight clench, and willed himself to breathe for a moment. That dream, that dream. That horrible dream. It had reared its ugly head again. Why? Whenever he did have it, it was an omen that something really bad was going to happen. "God, help me…" he pleaded, wiping the dampness from his forehead.

Laying down again, he felt hot streams of tears run down his face. His worst memory, in dream form. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was worse than that. He sighed and tried to clear his head. It was a school night, and he'd rather not be a tired zombie all day.

XXXXXXXXXX

"_We're back." _

_No, no, no. Cornered, scared. _

_Restrained, a prisoner. In a supposedly safe haven. _

_Blade to skin, hack-slash, thighs hurt. Blood all around. _

"_Ow, ow! Stop it, please!" _

_More blood, hack-slash._

"_Dad!" No answer. _

_Pain, sorrow, misery._

Hidan's eyes opened abruptly. He hadn't realized it, but he had been crying in his sleep. This was all just too much to handle. Bad memories, memories better left forgotten, resurrected. A crazy Jashinist hunter in his neighborhood. And now, a dude trying to replace his dad. This was not turning out to be a good month.

Why would Jashin-sama do this? Was this punishment? Had Hidan been sinful without knowing it? Had his god turned his back on one of his most loyal followers? Amongst numerous possibilities, there was one that was unchanging: Jashin-sama had sent him a fate worse than death.

The next morning, Hidan refused to get up with his alarm. He wasn't able to sleep at all the previous night after he had woken up from his bad dream. How could he? Every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was a blood-splattered tile floor, black uniforms and the formaldehyde-laden blades. At any rate, he wasn't emotionally or physically well enough right then to go to school. At least, that's what he thought.

DeAnn must have gotten the message, since she hadn't come into his room to see why it was taking him so long to get dressed and ready for the day. Hidan didn't make an effort to tell her the truth –losing sleep over a bad dream? That was really childish. Besides, he needed to catch up on lost hours.

XXXXXXXXX  
When Kakuzu got to school, he couldn't find Hidan anywhere. He wanted to apologize for the night before, seeing as though it probably took a huge toll on his psychological wellbeing, but he couldn't do that unless the bizarre-looking kid was here to apologize _to. _

At the end of the day, he had pretty much given up on his cause. Sighing and closing his locker door, he grunted. He hated to put off projects and things until the last minute, and that was exactly what Hidan was making him do. Just peachy.

Turning to exit through the west door, he found himself standing in front of another bizarre-looking American. This one, however, had orange, spiked hair, numerous and various facial piercings, and ringed gray eyes. Though the kid's gaze was virtually unreadable, it seemed to say, 'I mean business.' "You're Kakuzu Taikii, right?" he asked in a low-but-not-deep voice.

Kakuzu nodded. "Yes…why?" he inquired, as he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Something about this guy was _really _creeping him out.

He shrugged and handed the black-haired boy a folded-up piece of paper. "Name's Pein," he introduced. "I think you'll need that."

The other kid, incredulous about this entire encounter, carefully opened the note and read its contents:

_Hidan-_

_4412 Marion Ave. _

Confused, Kakuzu sent Pein a confused look. "But, wha-" he started, but the orange-haired guy hand already left. What a weird guy. Pocketing the strange little message, he continued on his way out the door. At least he knew where to go to say sorry now.

* * *

Ah, a matchmaker. Well, we'll just have to wait to see what the zombie pairing will do next, eh?

I made Kuzu's and Hidan's dream-sequences different on purpose, by the way. It's supposed to show how they think differently and how their subconsciouses reflect that, but whether it had that effect or not, I don't know.

And, I'm not calling Linkin Park emo. I actually like them (okay, love them), but their lyrics are a little…depressed, ya know? Whatever, industrial music ish good.

See you all after D.C.!


	6. Contempt and Disgust

Hello, fanfiction-reading peoples out there! Me again with an update (no surprise), and there's some special news this time!

Since Kishimoto-san never gave the majority of the Akatsuki members birthdays, my friends and I got out a calendar and planned them all out. And, in our moment of crackness, we decided that Hidan's should be October 29 (this Monday). So, when you get the chance, wish our favorite zealot a happy birthday. XD

Don't own Aéropostale or Friday the Thirteenth (thank God for the second one).

* * *

Kakuzu shuffled his feet as he headed down Marion Avenue. He needed to find Hidan to make things well, or at least the way they were, again. The last thing he wanted was for someone to hate him, especially when he didn't really have any friends to help him go about.

When he got to the address scrawled on the folded paper he received, he knocked on the door tentatively. Tapping his foot as he awaited an answer, he began wondering how his dad had known that Hidan was Jashin. Kakuzu hadn't known it when he had met the white-haired American, and people didn't just wear their religions across their pullover hoodies like they did the Aéropostale logo.

He was never greeted at the door, oddly enough. No one had answered it. Impatient, he jiggled the doorknob a bit, and the wooden door swung open almost effortlessly. Cautiously inviting himself in, he began to look around. There was a kitchen, a living room decorated in blues and maroons, assorted closets and archways connecting adjacent rooms to one another, but no sign of Hidan. _Is he even home? _Kakuzu wondered anxiously, afraid that he might have broken into someone's house and get absolutely nothing out of it.

The black-haired kid treaded up the carpeted stairs quietly, hearing industrial music as he neared the second floor. Hidan was probably the only one in the household that listened to that particular genre, Kakuzu guessed, so he figured that if he could locate the source of the music, then he would in turn locate Hidan.

The door that it was coming from, at the end of the seemingly endless hall, had lots of things taped onto it, from small posters to art projects, most likely completed in the mandatory art class at the school. In the center, a sign that read: _Hidan's Room. Authorized Personnel Only_ on lined paper hung, along with a few drawings of a circle with an upside-down triangle in it. Although Kakuzu had been studying romaji ever since that embarrassing first day, he didn't recognize the symbol. He figured that it was a weird type of punctuation.

As he turned the shiny doorknob and reluctantly pushed the decorated bedroom door open, the music got significantly louder and a faint cry sounded. Letting himself into the white-haired kid's domain, Kakuzu glanced around. There, once again, was furniture, a stereo in which the music had been coming from, and a computer desk, but no sign of the actual inhabitant. It wasn't until he was in complete enemy territory (so to speak) that he saw who he was looking for: or, at least, someone scrunched into a ball, hiding in a corner. "Hidan?" he asked, advancing warily toward the figure.

The person's fetal position tightened. "Go away," it murmured, in an unmistakable Hidan voice. "Now. I don't feel like talking."

"Well, good," Kakuzu replied, kneeling down a few inches away from the other boy, so as not to look too intruding. "You can listen. I'm sorry for what my dad did, okay? I didn't know you were Jashin, and if I had known, I would've never-"

"Shut the fuck up," the white-haired kid growled, raising his eyes up to glare at the unwelcome company. "Don't feed me that shit. You knew; I know it, you know it, so don't lie about it. You purposely got me to enter that hellhole of a house you live in, just so that your dad you do Jashin-knows-what to me and you'd get on your old man's good side. Admit it – you never had any good intentions toward me at all." His voice was cracked and hollow, like someone from a spirit-possession horror movie, and his mouth was cemented into a firm frown. It was apparent that he was pissed.

Kakuzu sent him a confused look. "What do you mean, I knew? How could I have? You never told me, and I can't mind-read."

With a grunt, Hidan's glare hardened. "Ha. Yeah, right. Like you don't know," he hissed, taking his hand's behind his neck and undoing something. "My necklace, you fucktard," he spat, holding his unusual pendant up by the chain. It glinted and shined in what little natural light entered the room, and it was the exact same symbol that was doodled all over his door.

_So _that's _how my dad knew! _the black-haired kid said to himself, jaw dropping. "Oh…I didn't know!" he practically stuttered. "I-I'm sorry! Honestly!"

Giving Kakuzu another dirty look, Hidan rehooked his necklace and turned to face the wall. "Tch, yeah. Of course, you little heathen," he scoffed, dropping himself to the floor. "Get the hell out and leave me alone."

"But, I-"

"GET THE HELL OUT AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"

With a sigh, Kakuzu obliged. There was nothing else he could do at this point; nothing was more fruitless than trying to convince a teenager of something that they didn't believe (except maybe a sakura tree in winter, but that was beside the point). "Fine," he huffed slightly, grunting and showing himself to the exit. "Be that way. See if I care."

Kakuzu's teeth gritted as he made his way home. How dare he?! That little American had been so damn rude! Why didn't he trust the fact that Kakuzu _hadn't _known? Maybe he wasn't as obsessive or bloodthirsty as his dad. Maybe he actually _cared _about Hidan's wellbeing. Maybe he wanted to _help. _

Kicking a rock down the street, his heart sank. Hidan hated him. He honestly, truly hated him. There was absolutely no way he could patch this up. Hidan wanted nothing to do with him. He wanted Kakuzu to stay out of his life _and_ field of vision. No second chance, just gone.

He didn't understand why it bothered him so much. He guessed it was seeing his would-be acquaintance glaring at him – illuminated white hair, darkened and intensified eyes, and lip curling that could scare the shit out of Jason from Friday the Thirteenth. There was something else in the Jashinist's expression, though, something underlying…something _sad. _Depressed, even. Was Hidan suicidal because he though that he wouldn't live much longer anyway so long as Kakuzu's dad was within walking distance? He certainly hoped not.

When he got home that afternoon, his father wasn't there, thank God, since Kakuzu was so late it wasn't funny. Trudging up the stairs to go to his room, he found a note attached to the banister:

_Went on some errands, be back soon._

_Tou-san_

The Asian boy rolled his eyes. He really didn't car where his dad was, since sooner or later, he'd have to come back home, not to mention the fact that if he was planning on assassinating Hidan, it would take days of notable preparation to avoid the government and the justice/legal system. Crumpling the message up in the palm of his hand, Kakuzu continued up the stairwell.

Plopping himself down onto the bed, he sighed happily. This was his sanctuary. His haven. The one place that no one would ever change, alter, get rid of, or otherwise violate. Here he was welcome to freely be himself.

Tired, he decided to take a shower, and wiggled himself out of his sweatshirt. So what if it was 4:45 in the afternoon? So long as he did it, he didn't think anyone cared when he bathed.

As he passed by the bathroom mirror, Kakuzu shot a quick glance at it, and what he saw disgusted him. Thick, black threads stitched their way across his chest and around his biceps, creating a zombie-like appearance. They bulged and pulsed, almost as if breathing, and they ate at his flesh, taking over what was left of his human self.

He hated it. He hated having scars, especially ones as revolting and putrid as the ones that he had. He hated having to wear long sleeves and hoodies in order to hide his true appearance, and he hated looking like a freak. Most of all, though, he hated having to hide himself from the world. The tendrils would cause mass panic, and going shirtless altogether was out of the question. Right now, he didn't blame Hidan for resenting him, and he was sure that if the white-haired boy saw him for who he really was, he would dislike him even more.

Stepping into the shower and turning the tap, Kakuzu brushed his relatively long hair away from his face as warm water rained down upon him. It felt good and refreshing, it cleansed and purified, and it relaxed and calmed a restless mind. Just what he needed.

About a half hour later, Kakuzu tapped his pencil against the tabletop as he tried to decipher his reading homework. Create a few metaphors, use them in sentences, then write a story with those sentences…it was all very confusing. Stupid figures of speech. All they ever did was puzzle foreigners, so why have them? To give reading teachers something to prate about, he assumed…

He wondered what Hidan was doing right then, as he was struggling with his second-language homework. Did the other boy had trouble in reading just like Kakuzu did? Or maybe he had trouble in math, or social studies…maybe he didn't have difficulty in school at all. Maybe…

Why was all this going through his head _now? _Hidan hated him, he reminded himself. Nothing was going to change that. Still, Kakuzu just couldn't shake the Jashinist's image from his head. Silken, silver hair, entrancingly exotic eyes, impeccable complexio-

He stopped himself there, shaking his head vigorously. What was he thinking? Hidan was a _guy. _How could he think that way about someone of his own gender? Not to mention the fact that white-haired boy thought that Kakuzu wanted him dead, so any attempts at affection would be trampled.

Exhaling nasally, he made a decision: he wouldn't let himself feel that way, at all. Nothing except hatred and contempt was every going to spawn from that relationship, anyways.

* * *

Completely Kuzu chapter! I dunno if you guys liked that or not, but I proved to myself that I could include enough details and plotline to do a single-perspective chapter. Yay.

Aw, the OOC-ness just doesn't stop, does it?! Ah well, I'm liking it. It's producing juicy angst and doubts about almost everything. XD And, it kind of makes sense to have Kakuzu a bit homophobic, since it's probably been drilled into his head that being gay is wrong by his ultra-religious father. I can go places with that, too. Just hope that the plotline doesn't kill itself on the way there.

Well, yeah. I tried a slightly different sentence structure-style-thing this time, (as opposed to my normal verb-adverb-noun-adjective makeup). I think it varies a bit more now, which is good, but it kinda makes me feel like my writing's getting away from me (if you know what I mean).


	7. Visitor

It's a sad day when I (as an author) have nothing to say, but that day has come.

Other than the fact that I had to (severely) coax this chapter out of myself, there's really nothing else to say. So, bear with me if it's rushed.

* * *

"Hidan, I don't care if you don't feel like it; you're going to school today. You can't skip two days in a row." DeAnn's somewhat shrill voice pierced through the silence of Hidan's room, disturbing his sleep.

The white-haired kid pressed his pillow over his head as he lay face-down in his warm bed. He didn't want to _deal _with this. He didn't feel like going to school. What wasn't to get? Today was _not _a good day for his caregiver to put her parenting skills into action.

"Hidan," his foster mom said strongly, "move. Out of bed. Now." Pulling the covers away and shaking his shoulder, she continued rambling in incomplete sentences. "Awake. Up-and-at 'em. Get up. Immediately. ASAP. OUT!"

Hidan, cold because of the missing blanket and irritated by DeAnn's insisting, removed the pillow from his face and sat up. Rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand, he replied, extremely agitated. "I heard you the first time," he almost growled, dropping himself back to his mattress and staring blankly at the ceiling. He groaned inwardly. Didn't she understand that he _didn't _appreciate it when she forced him to do things? He was an emotionally-and-forever scarred child. She shouldn't just assume that he could handle the normal school experience in his current state.

He could almost hear DeAnn's face cringe with anger. "Hidan," she reiterated, pointing to the open bedroom door, "get your happy little ass out of bed and get ready for school. You've used up your sick day for the month. Go," his would-be mom insisted, shaking her pointed arm around wildly. "Or do I need to turn off the heat again?"

That did it. She had won. Whenever DeAnn chose to turn the heat off, for whatever reason, Hidan's room was always the first to get the brunt of the impact, making it almost uninhabitable for human life (or, at least, that's what it was from his point of view). "No," he answered, defeated, sliding his hands down his face. "I'm getting up."

"Good, and hurry up with it. School's in a half-hour."

School was surprisingly easy that day socially. Kakuzu stayed out of Hidan's way, and Hidan stayed out of Kakuzu's. Although it was extremely quiet and full of solitude, Hidan wouldn't have had it any other way. Who needed a mother-fucking, hypocritical, sadistic little heathen, anyway? As far as he was concerned, no one did.

Something, however, _did _bother him, though. Even though they didn't contact each other verbally, the two boys would shoot quick glances at each other, just to check up on what the other was doing. During science, their lines of vision accidentally met, and what Hidan saw offset him. At first glimpse, Kakuzu's stare was softly hard (if that was even possible), but beneath that was something odd. Behind the iridescent emerald eyes was some type of sadness: remorse, maybe? No, probably not. Worry? Not likely. Depression? No, not exactly.

He mulled over this time and time again, trying to crack the code. What could it be? Self-hatred? Anxiety? Crestfallenness? No, no, no. This nagged and nagged and nagged at Hidan for the rest of the day, and, in study hall, he figured it out.

Sympathy. Kakuzu was feeling sympathetic for him. For being maliciously ripped open by a murderer and being cut deeper than any scalpel could even hope to reach. He couldn't believe it; Kakuzu was in on the whole 'capture Jashinist' thing, right? Why would he be feeling sympathetic? Unless…unless he _hadn't _been in on it. Unless he really _was _telling the truth the day before.

Hidan quietly slammed his head on his desk and sighed inwardly. He felt terrible now. He had yelled at and hurt Kakuzu's feelings for no real reason _again_.Why couldn't he be more open-minded about things? Why couldn't he just believe what people tell him? Because said people are probably lying, he reminded himself. It was stupid to assume anything someone else had said was the truth.

He grunted, cutting off his train of thought. His mind was so confusing and troubling. Why couldn't it just shut off and let him feel a bit of peace? Because then he would die. Clasping his head, Hidan cursed at himself. Would the madness ever stop?

XXXXXXXXXX

The school day was a hectic one for Kakuzu. Since he and Hidan had similar schedules, it had been a complete and utter challenge avoiding the bizarre-looking American. It wasn't that he didn't want to patch things up with the other kid –he'd like that more than anything else— but, in view of the fact that Hidan wanted absolutely nothing to do with Kakuzu, it was just easier to avoid him and prevent an awkward confrontation.

Even still, he felt a need to watch over the young Jashinist. To keep an eye on him, as Kakuzu called it. To see if the other boy wanted to apologize as well, however unlikely that may have been. It seemed that Hidan had been doing the same thing, because their eyes had become locked in a stare toward the end of the day. Both of them were caught off-guard by this, and though they both wanted to look away, neither of them could.

In Hidan's eyes, Kakuzu saw the same thing he had the day before: resent, sadness. Nothing had changed, so that meant that the American still hated him. Same old, same old, so to speak.

He should give up trying. Give up trying to befriend Hidan, give up trying to make amends, and give up any hope of feeling accepted. No one at this school wanted to talk to some newbie foreigner. He figured that the best thing was to wait until his dad was done with his whole bounty-fetish-esque-thing and take them both home. But, that meant that Hidan would have to die, given that Kakuzu's dad never left a job undone. And, that meant that Kakuzu would have to betray the other kid and somehow get him into a position in which he was an easy target. But, he couldn't do that, because _that _would mean that he would (technically) murder his peer, and that wasn't too appealing, either. And then there was the whole 'You shall not take innocent life' commandment…

Kakuzu slid his head onto his desk and breathed deeply. How confusing; how stressing. This was just another of those lose-lose situations.

"Kakuzu! Hey, Kakuzu!" a familiar voice called, just as Kakuzu was making his way home.

He turned around, surprised, and saw Hidan running up behind him. Sending the other kid a confused look, his head swirled with possibilities. _Okay, what now? More yelling? A death threat? Good Lord, I hope he keeps it somewhat decent this time…_ "Yes?" he asked politely, not wanting to further anger the young cult member.

Hidan approached him, panting. "I've been looking for you," he said in between breaths. "I have something I need to tell you."

"Look, if this is about how you think I'm a liar and-"

"I'm sorry," the other boy cut in, hanging his head as he spoke. "I'm sorry, okay? Once again, I have proven myself to be an insensitive and inconsiderate jackass, and I really don't blame you if you utterly despise me after this. I just…" he trailed off, meeting his gaze with Kakuzu's, "…I just don't want to make things hard for you. I mean, it's hard an all coming to a new place, but it has to be hell for you since you don't speak the language that fluently, and…"

Kakuzu had stopped listening. He certainly couldn't accuse Hidan of being incomplete in explaining himself, but did he have to be so _in-depth? _He was sorry, he was a jackass, and he wouldn't mind if Kakuzu loathed him after this. Not much more to it, so don't elaborate. "You're good," he said hurriedly, trying to speed up the conversation. "So, no worries, okay?"

Hidan's eyes grew wide. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," the black-haired kid pressed, beginning to walk home again. As he walked out the main doors, though, he saw the most interesting figure waving at him and calling his name. Leaning on a bright red car and tossing her hair back as the wind shoved it forward, she had bright orange tresses, multiple ear piercings, and a killer build, but Kakuzu recognized her nonetheless. His mother had come for a visit. Shit.

"Kakuzu! Kakuzu, honey, over here!" his mom beckoned, watching as he strolled out the gigantic glass doors.

He bit the inside of his cheek as he advanced toward his parental figure. His mom, his mom, his ungodly mom. The crazy one who had tried to cause an Internet server to collapse for the fun of it and who believed partying and having a bustling social life was much more important than keeping morals intact and making sure that the people you associated with aren't going to get you into trouble. "Who cares?" she used to say, back when she and Kakuzu's dad were still together. "The troublemakers are the fun people to hang out with. Just go for it." Oh, good God above, was she a handful.

When he reached his supposedly responsible adult guardian (schools almost never did background checks on parents, so they all assume that mothers are completely safe. Oh, how they are wrong), he let out the breath that he hadn't known that he was holding, and nervously entered the car. For obvious reasons, Kakuzu didn't trust his mother's driving.

They left the school parking lot, and all the while his mom babbled on and on about irrelevant things such as her life in New York, the different people she had met and how the Big Apple was different than Burbank ("It's so much more _crowded, _Kakuzu!"). The black-haired kid wasn't listening, simply tuning the sound of his mother's voice out of his head and concentrated on the scenery around him. Oh God, oh good God, creator of the world…he was in for a hell warmed over during the next few days.

* * *

(sigh) What a chapter. It took all my strength and six different playlists to get this thing out of my brain and onto paper, and still I'm dissatisfied. This entire thing was choppy and repetitive, not to mention the plotline's moving at a snail's pace. Well, there's going to be some _real _story in the next few installments (hopefully), so maybe that'll make up for this.

In addition, I am totally awed by the huge audience this fanfic has suddenly gathered. I'm starting to think that this little AU will be the first of my writings to reach 100 reviews while still in syndication. Hope and pray, I guess.


	8. In and Out of Love

Gomengomengomengomengomen for the late chappie! I IS VEWWY SAWRIES! T.T I just had a _really _strong impulse to write a Christmas ficcy-thing, so I did, and put this one on hiatus for a while (okay, technically, two weeks, but still a hiatus). Speaking of the Christmas fic, if you have time, please swing by my profile and give it (the fanfic) a look-see.

So, dearest readers, I present you with the triumphant return of Guardian! Yus. XD

Don't own MCR.

* * *

As Hidan walked home that day, his step was accompanied by a happy skip. He couldn't help the giddy feeling deep down in his chest, fleeting from left to right, up to down, in to out, and so on. Everything had gone according to plan; relations with Kakuzu had been fixed, hopefully for an extended period of time this time around. It was true about that 'want-a-friend-be-a-friend' thing. Life was good.

When he entered his house, it was quiet, as it normally was. DeAnn was still at work, leaving Hidan to fend for himself. That wasn't really saying much, though, since he knew where all the food was, how to work most of the various appliances around the house, and what to do if there should be an emergency. Hidan was somewhat self-sufficient in that perspective.

Today, however, was different, not obviously, but in a small and subtle way. Maybe his foster mother had forgotten to turn the washer off, or left the dishwasher running again. Hidan, being the apathetic person he was, didn't really care until he saw what the actual change was. Once again, laxly slouched in one of his kitchen's barstools, was the nuisance known as Terrance. His scruffy 5 o'clock shadow was still present, as well as a T-shirt displaying his favorite band, but something was up with him. Just the air around him seemed different – permanently tainted by (what Hidan thought of as) his evil aura. "Why are _you _here?" the white-haired kid asked rudely, dropping his backpack in a corner.

Terrance grunted with disapproval before replying. "What, no 'hello?' What kind of manners are those?" Brushing some messy hair to the side of his head, he shrugged. "Well, it doesn't matter. For your information, I live here."

The remnants of Hidan's now-nonexistent good mood had completely disintegrated at this point. Live here? What was that overgrown band wannabe talking about? "No, _I'm _the one who lives here. You're the one who has his own house somewhere else and leaves to go home," he retorted, raising a relaxed finger to point at Terrance. Hidan was aware that what he had just said was totally childish and undignified, but he honestly didn't give a fuck. He still considered himself a kid, to some degree, anyway.

DeAnn's boyfriend gave a slight laugh. "Ha. I got evicted," he said, turning his head to look away from the 7th grader at the other end of the conversation. "So, I'm staying here until I can find another place."

Basically, he was just going to mooch off of his girlfriend for the time being. Wonderful. "Yeah, whatever," the kid called back, climbing the flight of stair located near the kitchen's entrance. "Be sure to send me a memo when you decide to do something productive."

"Hey, watch yourself," Terrance warned/threatened as footsteps trudged up the stairwell. "You never know when I may surprise you."

XXXXXXXXXX

"And so, she was all like, "No way!" and I was all like, "Way!" and then-" Kakuzu ignored his mother as she continued to tell him about her adventures in New York in intricate detail. He didn't care about how she and Sheryl had managed to find really cute shoes at the hottest boutique for a really low price; there were bigger things that he needed to worry about. Both of his parents would be under on roof for a few days, maybe a week. Fights would be inevitable, along with yelling, screaming, and the occasional broken object. He wasn't looking forward to it.

His mother sighed as she pulled into the driveway of Kakuzu's current residence. "Well, here we are," she stated in a dry tone, unlocking the car. "Come on, 'Kuzu, let's get this over with."

The black-haired boy cringed at the use of his long-dead nickname. He hadn't been called that for a long, long time; not since he had turned seven, at least. It also arouse things that were better kept underneath the always-buzzing thoughts that circulated through his head on a daily basis, and since nothing in his life ever seemed to go well for him, Kakuzu had a lot of those things.

"Hello, Takeshi," Kakuzu's mother greeted, both formerly and stiffly. "It's nice to see you again." It was painfully apparent that she had to force the words out like she was vomiting bile (or something along those lines).

"Likewise, Fuyume," Takeshi, Kakuzu's dad, answered graciously, but with the exact same voice that the woman had. "I trust that you had a good flight?"

Kakuzu sat precariously on the patterned sofa in his living room as he watched the grown-ups converse in the tense atmosphere that they had created. It made the air stuffy and the people inside of it uncomfortable, but at least the peace was being kept, which was more that what happened the last time Fuyume had come around to visit.

Though he was bored to hell and back with the coerced discussion and evidently pointless small-talk, he didn't dare leave, because he knew that _he _was the reason that his parents weren't going berserk and attacking each other. The last thing he wanted was for them to break out into a fight, but on the other hand, he didn't want to be forced to listen to the robotic speech being said. With a sigh, he figured that their bickering was probable, and got up to leave. He would leave them to their own devices for a while.

XXXXXXXXXX

Uproarious laughter sounded from the lower floor of Hidan's house, where DeAnn and Terrance were enjoying themselves over some sort of alcoholic drink. Shoved against the wall next to the stairs, Hidan eavesdropped in a place where neither adult could, or would, see him. In between strings of slurred words and incoherent mumbling, semi-intelligent phrases could be heard, and the white-haired guy couldn't believe what he was hearing. DeAnn was saying something about George Bush being a rabbit, while Terrance argued that he was a slug. After a while, though, this type of repartee gets boring, and deciding that he had had enough of the drunken banter, Hidan quietly made his way up the stairs.

Once in his room, he pushed a button on his stereo, inserted a CD, and plopped himself onto his bed lazily as his MCR mix tape began playing. So, now Terrance was living with him. The question was, where? He sure as hell wasn't getting Hidan's room. Wait, maybe he and DeAnn would share a room. He shuddered at the thought; he _definitely _didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night to orgasms.

Speaking of DeAnn and Terrance's relationship, what was with the sudden drunkfest? To the best of Hidan's knowledge, DeAnn had never gone drinking before, so was that just a ploy by Terrance to get laid? Or maybe it was a ploy by DeAnn to get laid. He couldn't tell. Either reason meant that the two of them were getting closer to each other, though, and if they got closer, that could potentially mean marriage, and then Hidan'd _never_ get rid of him. Damn the thickening plot.

XXXXXXXXXX

'What the fuck do you mean it's _my _fault?!"

"I'm only saying what's true, God damn it!"

"Dude, shove off! I can do what I want! You don't control me!"

"Well, _someone_ has to, lest you be let loose and cause mass destruction!"

"I AM NOT A NUKE!"

Kakuzu covered his ears with his pillow as his parents' screams resonated throughout the house. They couldn't get along for one night. One night. They didn't even consider how Kakuzu was perceiving it, how it was scarring him. Nope, all they cared about was changing each other's points of view. That's all they used to do, too…

_A five-year-old Kakuzu woke up to something raucous. Rubbing his eyes awake, he discovered that the noises were coming for the great room, and, needless to say, he was curious. He crept over, as quietly as he could, to the wall separating the great room from the hallway, stretched himself out, and listened to the yelling and screaming emanating from the main room of his ranch-style house. His parents were yelling, it seemed, and neither of them sounded very happy. Little Kakuzu couldn't understand most of their conversation, due to the use of words not yet acquired in his vocabulary, but he could guess that it wasn't very nice. _

_A few minutes later, his mother shrieked something illogical, hit something, and stormed out of the room, walking right past the little boy in the process. Kakuzu, against his better judgment, gathered up enough courage to ask: "Haha, why were you and Tou-san fighting?"_

_Her aggravated walking ceased, and the woman affectionately called 'Haha' by her son turned around and smiled. "Oh, honey," she crooned, bending down to stroke Kakuzu's hair, "it's nothing. Please go back to bed." _

_Being the good kid he was, Kakuzu followed his mom's orders. Besides, why would his mom lie to him? As far as he could see, there was no point in it. _

The black-haired kid sighed outwardly when he recalled that night, the beginning of it all. Those late-night arguments became more frequent, and soon it became apparent that neither adult loved the other, making divorce a given. When it was all said and done, he was put in the custody of his father, and then this whole 'visit-scenario' began ensuing.

As the hurtful names and rude comments kept being thrown back and forth, Kakuzu collapsed himself over and made a plot to protest of the senseless hostility –he vowed to not leave his room at all until they could create a sort of peace treaty between themselves, even for a little bit. He doubted it would work, in sight of his parents' long reputation of verbal warfare, but it was worth a shot.

* * *

Well, I promised myself and a few reviewers that I would stop self-bashing, so I am, but…yeah, I bet you know what I'm going to say.

On another note, as I was typing this, my mother came through the room and read some of Kakuzu's parents' yelling, and gasped, "Ryo! Are you _swearing?! _Bleep all those out right now!" Well, I got rid of a few, so there, Mom. However, because of this intervention, I have no idea how clean future chapters will be, so I may need to reinstate the censoring system I had back in Psychologist around Ch. 6 (not too bad, I'm sure all of you have imaginations). And, of course, AlmightySponge will love me…

I probably just condemned myself by just saying that, but you guys have a right to know.


	9. Confrontation

HOLY SHIZU! THIS ONE IS LOOOONG!! I don't think I've ever written something with this chapter's length and posted it, and I guess that's why it's so late. Apologies for that. (sweatdrop)

So…yeah. Not much more to say, so let the plotline commence!

* * *

A fist pounded on a bedroom door, and a maternal voice accompanied it, sounding between every three hits. "Kakuzu! Kakuzu, honey, open up!" Her ability to speak seemed sincere enough, but behind the door hid a teenager, and he wasn't about to break his vow just yet.

Kakuzu glowered angrily at nothing in particular, his back up against the object of his mother's attack. He was going to stick to his means of protest, regardless of what either of his parents said (apart from apologizing to one another and calling a truce), which meant he wouldn't eat, drink, or go to school until some type of peace treaty was worked out. Lending a deaf ear to his mom's demands, Kakuzu fluidly put his earbuds in their respective ears and turned on his mp3 player, having it play an excessively metal rock song. They'd get the idea after a while, without an explanation.

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan ran his palm down his face, contorting his expression into an inhuman frown as he laid his head on the desk in front of him. He had made it to school on time by the skin of his teeth, seeing as though he had to walk there rather than hitching a ride with DeAnn as usual. His house wasn't terribly far from the building, taking maybe ten minutes to stroll from one to the other, but Hidan had left late that morning due to the lack of DeAnn's nagging for him to get up, and devoid of his foster mother's driving, he was without the fastest way to school.

Sighing with relief, he relaxed his tense muscles. He was there, not tardy, and safe. All he needed now was to focus on the task at hand (currently, schoolwork) and things would work themselves out. Speaking of working things out, where was Kakuzu? The cult member looked around, just shy of being frantic, but there was no sign of the heathen at all. Was he sick? He had seemed healthy the day before –which normally wasn't a sure-fire way to determine if someone was sick or not, but Hidan's mind worked in odd ways, and his logic was no exception—and he didn't say anything about going on any trips. How weird.

Hidan would have fretted more over this if it hadn't been that he was so damn exhausted, since even huge bundles of both molecular and kinetic energy like himself tire out once in a while, and adding the fact that he wasn't a morning person in any sense made the start to the day an unpleasant one for him.

Stepping through the silent halls of his student occupation, Hidan stared curiously at the pink slip of paper he held. Just moments ago, in the midst of his history class, a tall, thin, blue-haired girl with a white flower clip adorning it had interrupted and given him the piece of paper. "Read the back," she had whispered before heading back to her office page post, and he reluctantly, but still did, oblige. On the reverse side of the slip was a sentence of blue, handwritten text with a left slant:

_Meet me in the home economics room immediately- Pein_

The white-haired kid gave the message an incredulous glance: Pein was known for being able to forge and send paging slips in order to get into contact with his associates, much like an underworld kingpin, but the real question was why he would want anything to do with Hidan. Was Pein interested in hiring him for some sort of 'project' he happened to be working on, or just punishing him for something that he hadn't realized he had done wrong? So many questions, and not an answer for any of them…

The home economics room was abandoned that period, seeing as though the class had taken a field trip that day, and eerily quiet, much to Hidan's consternation. It was plain to see why this was the perfect place for a secret meeting at the time: it was near the main office, so any passerby who happened to see Hidan heading in its direction would assume that he was going to the disciplinary-administrative section of the building, and most of the room as located behind a solid brick wall, making it easy to conceal two people conversing within it. Yes, Pein certainly was a genius worthy of a mob-leader position.

When Hidan entered the classroom, the first thing that caught his eye was Pein's bright, nonconformist-orange hair styled in its normal rebellious spikes, with his prominent facial piercings being the second. He had propped himself against the wall behind him, his ringed, gray eyes closed, and boomed out an order: "Close the door, lock it, and come over here."

The other boy did as he was told post-haste, trying with all he had not to seem skittish or flighty. If the stories he had heard about Pein were true at all, then it was best to stand as strong as one could around the guy, in a matter of speaking.

Once he was deep enough in the room, Pein began to talk in his signature despotic tone. "Hidan," he began, lifting himself from the wall and padding heavily around the room, "you know where Kakuzu lives, correct?" With a slight nod from the zealot, he continued, authority ringing through his very aura itself. "Good. As you and I are both aware of, he is not present at this learning establishment. Do you know why?"

Hidan shook his head robotically as he felt adrenaline shoot into his bloodstream—whatever the characters in horror movies go through, it had nothing over the kind of fear that Pein could instill—taking a quiet, small breath while trying to keep his body language as calm as possible.

Pein closed his eyes, out of slight annoyance this time, and sighed. "Okay, then. Well, my advice to you is to visit him tonight," he stated matter-of-factly, releasing another breath. "I believe it's in both of your best interests."

The cult member nodded, stifling the confusion whirling around in his head uncontrollably as he unlocked the door and left upon the other kid's order. Sheez, whatever he should become when he grows up, Hidan would hate to have to work under that sadist.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Kakuzu, God damn it, come out!"

"We know you're in there!"

Kakuzu scoffed and plugged his ears, trying to block out the distasteful screaming coming from the wooden door across the room from him. His parents just didn't get it; he _was not _coming out under any circumstances less than his requests. Though he had never really stated the requests being referred to in the first place, he knew that his parents were smart people –how else could they have accurately tracked the members of a minor cult religion or manage to crash an Internet server without alarming the feds?

Even still, he hoped they would get it soon. Not only was he bored out of his mind, but his stomach hurt hollowly and he was having the worst kind of 'swimming' headaches that one person could contract. Hugging himself, he tipped off of his bed (the spot where he had been situated for the past hour or so) and toppled onto the bare wooden floor. This was going to be a bumpy ride.

XXXXXXXXXX

Yet again, Hidan was pisssed off when he returned home that day; but, on this occasion, he couldn't figure out why. He was aware that his bad moods were normally the product of some other underlying emotions, but he didn't remember ever getting sad, anxious, or any other type of feeling along those lines (disregarding the run-in with Pein) that day, so, there really was no reason for a bad mood. Must be a bad day for Scorpios.

He was able to slip past both DeAnn and Terrance undetected as well, creating somewhat of a lonely, longing feeling deep inside of his chest. DeAnn was always with her boyfriend nowadays, and she never took any notice of Hidan anymore. It was like he didn't exist, and it made the white-haired kid feel thrown out and forgotten, like yesterday's trash.

His teeth gritted as he made his way up the carpeted stairs silently, heading to his room, when he remembered something: he needed to visit Kakuzu. Pein had commanded it, so it was to be fulfilled –he was like an urban god in this sense—but Hidan wasn't up to visiting just yet. He'd do it later; after all, he needed to keep his procrastination record in check.

Hidan rolled smoothly through his feet, hands in his jeans' pockets, across the plaster-white sidewalk directly in front of Kakuzu's abode. He sighed nasally, readying himself for the dangerous task he was about to embark on: he was about to enter enemy territory, head-on, and try to talk to someone with whom his relations with had been strained and tense at best. Needless to say, the cards weren't stacked in his favor.

Gathering what little courage he could foster, he purposefully walked up to the front door, shifted his foot to strengthen his stance and make it easier for him to start running on a second's notice, and raised ge he a balled fist to knock on the wood. Just as he was about to touch the beige-painted gateway, Hidan withdrew his hand. What if it was a bad time? What if he was interrupting something? What if…?

He shook his head rigorously. Whatever happened, he would face it. Or, at least, try to.

To his surprise, the door was left unlocked, and with a quick turn of a knob Hidan was admitted to the Hyper-Christian-House-of-Doom. Surveying his surroundings, he found that no one was present in the living room or front hallway, and incessant and vulgar (even for Hidan's standards) fighting and yelling was coming from the kitchen. Kakuzu's dad, as it seemed, was bickering with a woman in Japanese, and because it sounded like it was pretty heated, Hidan avoided the kitchen altogether and tiptoed over to the stairwell in the corner to attempt to locate his friend.

The cards, perhaps, were in Hidan's favor, in view of how easy it was to distinguish Kakuzu's room from the others on the second floor; all the rest had open doors and no human life. The black-haired kid, however, was apparently behind a tightly locked door, though, since said door hadn't budged when Hidan had pushed on it. "Hey, Kakuzu?" he solicited gently, not wanting to profess his presence to half of the population, "it's Hidan. Open up, please?"

Within ten seconds, Kakuzu had cracked the door open, ever-so-slightly. "Why?" his baritone voice asked, just as softly.

"Be-CAUSE, if you old man finds me here, he'll shoot me or worse!" the first boy hissed through his teeth, trying to make a point. "I'm risking my life being here, so you'd better let me in, heathen!" Hidan was past nervous at this point; if Kakuzu wouldn't conceal him, if even for a little bit, he would be seriously dead.

The Asian kid took a breath, closed his visible eye (the other one being behind the door) and pulled the barrier open with one fell swoop. "Well, okay," he halfheartedly agreed, "but get in quick."

Nodding, Hidan accepted, hurriedly following the directions given to him. The room, he noticed, was darkened by the blue-twilight, and that it was somewhat barren, without many of the items and applications that made his own room cluttered and disorganized (Kakuzu had just moved, he reminded himself, so most of his stuff must have been in storage). He also took note that Kakuzu's expression bore something of a sickly, tired person's face, not to mention the disheveled appearance, and that the other kid wasted no time in situating himself in the far-right corner. Hidan's head tilted with his curiosity; whenever he confined himself in a corner, it usually meant he was in 'emotional-basketcase' mode. Would the same principle apply to the other boy?

Kakuzu took a deep breath, bringing his knees into his chest and holding them from under his thighs. "So, what brings you here?" he asked, sighing delicately. "Come to scold me about my absence today?"

"Um, no," the cult member said, shifting weight from one of his legs to the other. "Sorry to disappoint you. Actually, I've come to see what the matter is. Let's just say a little birdie told me you were having a bit of trouble." _Yeah, a little birdie with bright orange hair, multiple peircings and Medusa's glare, _Hidan added to himself.

The black-haired kid's gaze drifted to his right. "Why should I tell you anything?" he demanded, obviously referring to Hidan's ability to use emotional ammunition to wound others.

"Because I asked nicely," he retorted, tossing his head back to evoke a sense of carelessness into the strained environment. "No cussing, no insolent demanding, and no insulting, for once. Spill."

Kakuzu laid his head on his knees. "To find out, listen." When the cult member sent him a look of puzzlement, he motioned to the lower floor, where his dad and the woman were still going at it. "That's why. They're my parents, like you probably noticed, and they never stop fighting like that, even though they're divorced. I hate it, and my staying in here is to protest."

The white-haired kid gave a small laugh. "You think _that's _going to stop them from fighting? Dude, if they hate each other, nothing's going to stop them from doing so. People are stubborn that way."

Kakuzu sighed again. "Yeah, you're right; they do hate each other, but I'm the one thing that they have in common. I figure if I do something drastic and keep on doing it, they'll have to come to some sort of compromise to get me to stop," he explained, raising his head from its former pillow and brushing his stringy bangs away from his face. "Besides, this is my fault, anyways."

"How is any of this _your _fault?" Hidan inquired, taking up a seat next to his friend on the wall. This was a typical divorce case; kids often held themselves culpable for their parents' wrongdoings, and Hidan knew exactly what to do. "If blame's being pinned, it should be on your 'rents. Their bickering's what made you resort to passive resistance or whatever it's called, so they're the ones at fault. And, like you said, you're the one thing your parents have in common. If they smarten up, they'll cease fighting and team up to find out what's going on with you." He paused as the female voice (Kakuzu's mom, it appeared) screeched something inaudible. "Judging by the current circumstances, though, it seems that they have yet to become learned," he added with a grin.

This only made the Asian kid curl up into a human ball, staring at the wooden floor below him. "It is _to_ my fault," he dissented, "because…because it just is! Look, it complicated…"

"Kakuzu, Kakuzu," the white-haired kid said, shaking his head from left to right, "If you keep blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong in your life, you'll only get depressed—believe me, there are things that I still feel guilty about, even when they weren't my fault. You just have to forgive yourself and forget, however hard that may be." Hidan wrapped an arm around Kakuzu's shoulders, bringing him into a friendly, sideways hug. "Okay?"

The other kid's emerald eyes were still glued to the floor, his tanned skin tone tinted with a slight blush, but he nodded anyway. "Yeah," he agreed, voice hoarse and cracking.

Hidan's smile widened. "Well, that's good to hear. Wouldn't want my new bud to be all sad and emo, now would we?" He assumed that it was safe to consider Kakuzu a friend, considering all that was going on at the moment, and he couldn't help but connect to the Asian's insecurity. Hidan often blamed himself for the temple massacre he had witnessed, and, although it wasn't his error at all, it felt like he could have done something to prevent it…but, then was not the time to reminisce negatively, he decided, terminating the thought.

"No, I guess not…"

"Good, it's settled," the Jashinist said, looking Kakuzu square in the eye. "Now, don't go all anxious-depressed on me now, else we'll have a few—" he paused to crack his knuckles for emphasis, still bearing a huge beam "—problems. Got that?"

The black-haired kid's eyes met the other's with a gawk of confusion. "Uh, okay," he replied, "but just don't scare any children on your way home, alright?"

This earned a giggle from both boys, and Hidan got up to leave. "I have to go," he stated, evenly strolling over to the door. "See ya round school one your folks decide to be agreeable," he bode, leaving the refuge and Kakuzu alone. "Best of luck to you."

When Hidan arrived home for the second time that day, DeAnn wasn't there to reprimand him about leaving the house without permission. Instead, to his dismay, there was something worse than DeAnn's wrath. "Hey, there," a medium-pitched male tone of voice crooned as Hidan walked through the living room to get to the staircase. "Where've ya been, short stuff?"

The younger male gave a disgusted grunt. Terrance. He turned his head slightly, just enough to glare and the moocher, and replied in a mocking, upset tone. "First of all, I'm not short," he snapped, as he always did when people commented on his stature. "Second, I was visiting a friend."

"A friend, eh? What _kind _of friend?" Terrance taunted with a leer. "Dear Hidan wasn't being naughty, was he?" Laughing at his own joke, he continued. "Why, I remember one time when DeAnn and I—"

"You can stop there," Hidan interrupted, not willing to hear a boyfriend-girlfriend story, especially from a pervert like Terrance. "For your information, I was over a guy's house, but don't get any ideas," he articulated irritably, stomping up the stairs. "Jashin-damned horny bastard mother-fucker can't keep his head out of the gutter for his less-than-worthless life," he grumbled to himself, careful not to let the person in question hear.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu covered his face with his hands after Hidan had safely left his house. How unexpected was that?! Just coming over like that, braving the evil Jashinist hunter, to see what the matter was. How sweeter could one person get? And, Hidan had called him his bud, which he knew to be an informal word for 'friend,' and had been hugging him while doing it. Kakuzu was lucky that he didn't blush easily; otherwise he would have easily died from blood going to his head.

What the hell was he thinking?! He did _NOT _love Hidan. Did **not, **did **not, **did _**NOT. **_Still, Hidan had called Kakuzu a friend…but that meant that they were only _friends_; no relationship was involved, so he was safe, in a way; in the other, he was upset. Damn those stupid hormones.

Cradling it, Kakuzu heard his stomach moan sickly and along with it his skull throbbed. He had been episodes like this one since he had started to protest three days ago; the aching, the rawness, the stinging, and all the other symptoms he had been having. It could have been anything—food poisoning, and allergic reaction, or the physical effects of anxiety; anything. Whatever it was, it hurt like hell, and Kakuzu wanted it to stop.

Using all of his strength (he hadn't eaten in three days, thus he was weak), Kakuzu pulled himself up onto his bed and began to drift into a warm, deep sleep. Non-violent protests, it seemed, took more energy than once thought.

* * *

0.0 Wow. Just wow. I have no idea what to think of this. Perhaps you all could help me out…?

Kuzu's still OOC, Hidan's just an unpredictable mess…ugh. I just don't know anymore. But, I do want to thank all my readers for staying with me this far; these chapters get an average of about 250 hits per, so that's pretty sweet. XD


	10. Truth

Shallow breathing sounds and faint heartbeats were the only sounds that he could hear, and an inky blackness that stretched farther and wider than anything else Hidan had ever seen was the only thing he could see. It was this unfussiness that he liked most about his rituals: when under the protective veil of Jashin-sama, nothing mattered; not relationships, not past incidents, nor anything else that existed in the material world. It was, in essence, one-on-one time with The Almighty, creator and creation.

When it came time for Hidan to open his eyes and return to the reality in which he dwelled, his room was bathed in a warm, orange-tinted light, and the hard, wooden floor that he had lain on for Jashin-knows-how-long was now hot and sticky because of the half-dried, sun-warmed blood that had spilt onto it. The pike that he had allegedly shoved into his chest three inches away from his heart protruded out at an odd angle when he sat up, and Hidan removed it quickly to avoid any other injury other than the one he had brought up unto himself. Any affliction done after the ritual would take longer to heal, after all.

Hidan completed his clean-up routine without worry of being discovered that day; both DeAnn and Terrance were gone from the house, for different reasons that he could not bring himself to remember or care about. Why should he? It barely affected him, and it gave him a perfect opportunity to perform a religious sacrament that he had been putting off due to all the drama that had occurred in his life during the past few weeks.

It was late when DeAnn returned that night, well past the time when kids such as Hidan should have been asleep, and she took no notice of him sprawled on the green-patterned sofa as she walked past the living room while going straight up the stairs, probably to go to bed. Though he hated the lack of attention, Hidan didn't mind that particular night. Now he could watch Deathnote uninterrupted.

Terrance came later still, with bloodshot eyes with black bags under them and a slouched posture (more so than usual). It was clear that he was way too tired to fight any type of battle with Hidan, whether it be physical, emotional, or verbal, and that suited the younger one just fine. He was exhausted himself, being still up at 12:30 in the morning, and frankly, he was going to hit the sack soon as well. Rest was crucial at his age (and at any age, for that matter).

XXXXXXXXXX

He could hear the drowned-out voices, some worried, some panicked, some stoic. He could feel the constant touch of cold, manipulating hands, and he could smell the antibiotic-laden air and its distressing scent. He could open his eyes and glance out them blearily while attempting to discern the various forms of his surroundings. He just couldn't understand why.

Why? Why was he being taken? Why was he being fretted over by people he didn't even know? Why was he unable to use his sense to their fullest extents, and why was he at a loss to figure out where he was or where he was going? Millions of questions like those plagued Kakuzu, bouncing around his head, contributing to the throbbing that was already taking place. He watched, an inactive spectator, as several people in light blue scrubs and white jackets monitored and messed with him; he must have been at a hospital, for these people were obviously doctors.

Kakuzu closed his eyes weakly as his thoughts refused to flow smoothly, as they should have. He was still incredibly tired, finding it hard to concentrate on anything, so he didn't exert the effort to try. He would need his strength later, he assumed.

After what seemed to be hours, Kakuzu found himself lying idly on a sterile-white hospital bed with various IVs and overseeing systems injected into and underneath his flesh. Besides the persistent beeping from the machines around him, the room, white as the bed and also windowless, was silent beyond human perception. Or, at least, it was, until a certain male voice bellowed a low, ringing yell that seemed to cause the walls to shake. He recognized it as his father's, though he couldn't understand a word of it, hard as he tried. At the most, Kakuzu could tell that the scream had something to do with him.

Pins-and-needles engulfed his left arm when he tried to move it shortly after that. It looked like his senses weren't the only things hindered; his motor skills were affected as well. What had that nurse put in that IV drip? Whatever it was, it was keeping Kakuzu blunt, unaware, and clumsy, something he didn't particularly enjoy. His body, his pain, his anxiety…he owned them all, so why shouldn't he be able to feel them? Those medical employees had no right to control him like they were!

The boy sighed, relaxing what little control over his limbs he had. Right now, he was powerless and at the mercy of his captors. Resting his head to the side, he fell asleep. Nothing else better to do, he supposed.

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan, slouched over with his hand underneath his chin while propping it up, had a bored, uninterested look plastered onto his face as he flipped through the after-school TV programming with the television remote. Digital cable, 990 channels, and not a thing to watch. Oh, the irony.

The local broadcasting channels, Channels Three, Five, Seven, and Eight, were loaded with special reports from their respective news programs, and Hidan disregarded them as usual, until the other stations he normally watched proved to have nothing worth paying attention to. Feeling defeated and fed-up, he randomly tuned the TV into Channel Eight, where an annoying red-haired newscaster began talking: "Well, Bob and Laura, there has been some large commotion centered around St. Ignatius's Hospital out here in downtown Burbank. Sometime around 12:30 this morning, a young Asian boy was admitted with a fever of over 105 degrees Fahrenheit"—the screen switched over to a scene of doctors and other medical professionals pushing a stretcher into the hospital's ER entrance—"but the doctors found something quite a strange occurrence when they began examining him. Though no official statement has been made at this time, it is rumored that thick, ropey, black threads have been interwoven into the boy's chest and part of his—"

The television set was promptly turned off before the newscaster What's-His-Face could finish his sentence. If someone was in the hospital, they would be having a hard enough time coping with their hospital-worthy sickness; the last thing they would need is the media breathing down their necks. Hidan wanted no part in any of the disgraceful publicizing actions.

The sudden report made him think immediately of Kakuzu. The black-haired kid hadn't been in school that day, probably because he was still protesting, but how was he getting food and water when he wasn't letting himself out of his room? The human brain can only go about three or four days without water, so Kakuzu could easily kill himself inadvertently while keeping his vow, and his parents would not notice because they would be too busy bickering with each other. How terrible would _that _be?

It wasn't his place to worry, though. Kakuzu's life was Kakuzu's life, and he could do whatever he wanted to do with it. Even still…Hidan was the only person besides the black-haired kid himself who knew the extent of his behavior and knew the exact terms of which Kakuzu would settle on. It was necessary for him to be concerned, right? Or, was it not? Hidan hit his head with the heel of his hand; good god Jashin, he thought too much.

XXXXXXXXXX

Being incarcerated in a hospital and being temporarily paralyzed can have benefits, Kakuzu found. He now had time to think clearly; time to evaluate and analyze and reason, something he almost never got to do otherwise. And, in sight of the events that had recently gone over, this was an extremely good thing.

Kakuzu decided on one very important issue: he loved Hidan. There was no getting around it, nor was there a way to paraphrase it. He simply loved Hidan. Though he was unsure if it was a crush, puppy love, or the real thing, it was definitely love of some kind. He was aware that this fact would probably get him looked down upon by most of society, but he couldn't care less if he tried. If Hidan loved him back (unlikely, but still possible), then people's opinions would not matter. They would be happy—wasn't that what everyone wanted in life?

Wasn't it?

* * *

Don't own Deathnote. (Forgot to say this at the beginning.)

So…this was short and filler-ish, and you guys probably didn't like it, but…I thought it turned out very well. I liked it, for once. XD Though it's sort of like I'm losing myself in a more sophisticated writing style…but that's good. At least, I _think_ it is…

Smile, for life is good, especially when you acknowledge the truth.


	11. Control Issues

Okays, I WAS going to withhold this chapter until a certain friend of mine reviewed another story, but I got impatient, so…here you go! XD (You win this time, Kristal. -.-)

It's amazing what an 8-track Rise Against CD can do.

* * *

Hidan was no psychiatrist, but something was definitely out of the ordinary. It had only been two days since Kakuzu was admitted into St. Ignatius's Hospital, of which he had heard through the never-ending grapevine that was his middle school, but he couldn't stop himself from missing the young Asain; even with his quirky and messed-up loyalties, Kakuzu was likable. He often caught himself daydreaming of the other as well: of his iridescent jade eyes, of the way his stringy black hair fell gracefully over his tan forehead, of his warm, gentle touch, of what it would be like to share a moment of pure privacy with him…

Hidan would often awake with a start from these fantasies, astounded that he had come up with them himself. It wasn't that being gay was unacceptable in the Jashin religion (most of its practitioners couldn't care less), but what would the world think? DeAnn? Kakuzu, even? Just because the rest of the universe accepted it didn't mean that the boy on the receiving end would, too; after all, he _did _live in the Hyper-Christian-House-of-Doom, and he _had _been raised by a super-conservative father. Putting those factoids into the equation that told that only about ten percent of the human population was homosexual meant that there was an extremely likely chance that Kakuzu didn't share Hidan's affections.

Even with most of the odds stacked against him, he needed to see the black-haired boy again, hence why he took a detour from school after classes has dismissed and headed straightway downtown, thirty-some blocks from his current location to visit his now-incarcerated friend and hope that he would be glad to see a familiar face after the hell he had accidentally put himself through.

At the hospital, there wasn't much going on—secretaries caged behind granite counters answering the never-ceasing ring of the various telephones, patients checking out with their respective families in tow, and numerous gurneys, both with and without afflicted people on them, rushed back and forth out of an 'employees only' door. Unsure of what to do or where to go, Hidan strode cautiously up to the center counter being tended to by a ditzy-looking blond nurse and sputtered, "Um, hi…can you tell me where Kakuzu Taikii's room is? I'm a friend, and I have permission to visit."

The nurse, totally unaware of his blatant lie, shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. "I'm afraid I can't do that," she said, her voice high and fragile-sounding. "He's in terrible condition, and we're not even letting his own family see him, much less his friends. I'm sorry," she cooed insincerely, "but you can talk to his physician if you want."

He gave her a blank stare, exasperated by the fact that a can't-do-anything wimpy-voiced little skin-and-bones nurse could restrict him like that. "Look, lady, I didn't come here to chat with some medical student wearing a cross between a bathrobe and a monkey suit," he spat, letting his childish side overshadow his more logical half. "I walked thirty fucking city blocks to talk to _Kakuzu. _Let me see him, damn it!"

"Once again, I'm sorry, but I told you," the nurse repeated, "but I can't let you go into his room, and I certainly can't let you talk to him. The doctors won't permit me to," she said, still using her annoying and overly-girly tone. "If I were you, I'd run along. It'll take you a bit to get home, right?"

"Hate to burst your bubble, but you're not me, therefore you can't predict what I would do. I am _not _going to leave until I can actually make contact with Kakuzu, and you won't be able to convince me otherwise," he continued, protesting. "Let. Me. See. Him."

She sighed, apparently frustrated with the boy's outspoken tenacity. "Kid, if you don't go right now, I'll have to call security who will, in turn, throw you out and make it so that you aren't allowed back into this establishment again. Is that what you want?"

Aforementioned kid's eyebrows furrowed together hard enough to induce pain, but he had to consider what the spacey makeshift secretary was saying. If he was banned from the hospital, he wouldn't be able to meet up with his black-haired counterpart when they began allowing people in, and he would have to wait even longer to even think of conversing with him. Exhaling nasally, Hidan turned away, beginning to walk out the door. "Fine," he said, irritated by the fact that he had to admit defeat, "but be sure to tell him I stopped by, okay?"

XXXXXXXXXX

Assorted wirings and tubing shifted and tugged as Kakuzu sat upright in his hospital bed, feet resting lightly on the tiled floor beneath him. He hadn't kept track of the time he had spent in the maddening place of healing, but whatever number of days that had passed had unquestionably given his body a fair chance to recuperate, and he felt better then than he had in a long time. He couldn't wait to go home, with its many crosses and rosaries, where he wasn't treated as an uneducable child and didn't need to have nurses and other medical staff assisting him with everything. Also, home meant school, and Kakuzu would have a chance to see Hidan again.

The only things keeping him tethered to the dreaded asylum, really, were the IVs and monitoring systems put in place against his will, which were swiftly torn out of the arms that they latched into. Kakuzu had always had a strong detest for needles, and he didn't want them feeding into his bloodstream anymore.

Next, he took his street clothes, folded neatly on a countertop across the room, and began to change into them: untying and removing the skimpy patient garment in exchange for his jeans, shirt, and pullover hoodie; he found it liberating and enthralling to be able to move freely, without the restraint of the many cables attached to him. Not only that, but his casual attire was much more insulated than the uniform he was forced to wear previously, and due to the air conditioning installed throughout the entire building, warmth was good.

Just as Kakuzu's head poked out of his sweatshirt, the doctor that had been continually checking up on him (physician, he reminded himself) came through the windowed door. "Kakuzu," he said, closing the door behind him quietly, "why aren't the IV drips still in you? And why are you getting dressed?"

"Because I feel better," the former patient replied simply, smoothing the frizzying static from his normally-flat hair. "I'm going home."

The physician chuckled, putting his hand on Kakuzu's shoulder and pushing him into a sitting position on the bed. "Oh, no, you aren't," he said, the temporary smile lost from his face. "You won't be going back for a long time, son."

The younger male was both shocked and angry; he was feeling healthier, so why couldn't he leave? And, what told that quack that he would be allowed to keep him in this God-forsaken torture chamber? They didn't own him, nor did they control him! "What do you mean?" he asked innocently, maintaining his outrage at an undetectable level. "I'm better. Lots better. Like, ready-to-do-a-high-octane-aerobic-workout better. I can go home."

Doctor-Physician shook his head, laughing all the while. "That's a good one, kid, it really is. But, in all seriousness, you're staying here; we need to run a number of test on those…threads of yours," he stated, grabbing a hold of a stitch near the kid's shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze. "Don't you worry, though, because these tests won't hurt you at all, except for some possible skin irritation, and maybe some—"

Kakuzu's hand shot out instinctively, clutching the grating medical professional's throat, cutting off his sentence and his air supply. Tightening the vice grip being put on the airway, his almond-shaped eyes squinted unyieldingly; they had planned on using him as a lab rat the entire time, totally without his consent. One thing was clear: they were_ not_ going to keep him cooped up in this poor excuse for a doctor's office any longer. Kakuzu's blood began to boil as he thought of the extensions of their intentions, and his resentment surfaced itself, capturing him in its unrelenting cycle. "Listen closely," he growled lowly, "I am_ not _staying here and am going to let you fuck around with me using a mediocre chemistry set." Sensing the threads moving down to his wrist, he persisted, "I'm going home, damn it, whether you like it or not."

The physician gave a slight grunt of pain as four of the former patient's tentacles made contact with his neck, drawing blood and damaging his maw beyond repair. However, Kakuzu's antipathy was particularly unmerciful and unforgiving, and he decided that the Ph.D recipient deserved further punishment, thus jabbing the victim in the stomach and forcing more of his ropey, grotesque stitches to pierce his flesh. Though the doctor writhed and flailed in pain, Kakuzu continued, utterly destroying most of the doctor's bowels and slicing right through his esophagus.

Pleased with his work, the black-haired kid threw the dying corpse into a corner, away from the door's view, washed the blood off of his hands and sleeves in the sterile sink located in the same corner, and silently made his way out.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Hey, kiddo," DeAnn greeted as Hidan walked through his kitchen after he had gotten back to his domicile. "You're a tad late, aren't you?" she asked playfully, shaking a bit of some sort of spice into a pot of boiling. "I'm attempting to make soup again; you have been warned."

The 7th grader laughed in response. If anything, DeAnn was known for her inability to cook anything from scratch, be it soup or pancakes or anything in between, but it suited him just fine. Taking risks was a part of his nature. "Okay. I'll be sure to bring the flamethrower, should a monster suddenly rise from the murk," he retorted in the same joking spirit that his foster mother had had a minute before while heading up to his room.

Tossing his backpack to the side and pressing 'play' on his stereo as he normally did, Hidan dropped himself onto his bed. DeAnn sure was good-natured about her shortcomings, and she was undeniably quick to use he knack for comedy to make fun of herself. He had never had another foster parent quite like her before, and he really did have a fondness for her, which brought him to a startling query: what if DeAnn hated him because he was gay?

Hidan stopped himself there. _He _wasn't ever sure if he was homosexual or not, so it would be stupid to jump to conclusions just yet. And, there was an applicable chance that DeAnn wasn't homophobic…but what if she was? She would probably send him out of Burbank for good, somewhere far away, never to see the city's bright lights or quiet suburbs again. But, what if he _wasn't_ gay and she was homophobic? Then, there wouldn't be a problem, right? Sighing, he let out a displeased hum—he _really_ needed to stop worrying himself.

Later that night dinner was served, and it became apparent that the flamethrower would not be needed, in view of the fact that no type of sea serpent or mutant raised itself from the container in which the soup was made, and the food itself wasn't that bad. Terrance and Hidan were sure to show their approval, though Hidan's way did not include talking with his mouth full, as Terrance's did.

The young cult member repeatedly stirred his soup around the light blue-on-white soup plate, wanting to ask DeAnn the question he had been pondering earlier, but his Jashin-damned inhibitions prevented him from doing so, because the Bringer of Darkness (Terrance) was present. However, it began to eat away at both his appetite and his stomach lining, and he brought it up accordingly. "Hey, DeAnn, not to start anything controversial, but…what would you do if I was gay?"

The woman sitting athwart from him at the table propped her spoon up against the side of her bowl. "Well," she started, intertwining her hands and laying them onto the tabletop, "I'd give you a lecture on AIDS, mob psychology, and society's general distaste for gay people, but after that, I'd take you on a shopping spree," she finished, adding the last part with a grin. "That answer your question?"

He absently nodded, bringing his now-empty bowl and utensil over to the sink. "Yeah, I guess. I'm not, by the way," Hidan said additionally, to disprove of any suspicions. "Just wonderin'."

His foster mother giggled, watching him go up the staircase to his usual spot, seemingly expecting no less from him. In contrast, Terrance shot him a distrusting look, nonetheless subtle. But, Hidan hadn't noticed either of the reactions; he had been too busy trying to get his blushing under control.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu frowned as his tennis shoes shuffled along the sidewalk, his surroundings encompassed in a luminescent tan light produced by the setting sun in the west. Because he had allowed himself to lose it and attack that physician, the threads that had come out of his arm had left lopsided holes in his sweatshirt sleeves, one for each stitch that had been released. Although it was normal for teens to chew holes into their hoodies, he would be hard-pressed to tell his dad a convincing story for why there were gigantic tears in his clothing, larger than what most people could create with their teeth in the first place.

Pushing his fingers through the gaps, he shrugged it off nonchalantly. That guy had deserved it, trying to make him a test subject. The nerve of the physician in question had been agitating, as well, even if Kakuzu _did _want to know what the things that were laced into him were; the bottom line was that he hated tests almost as much as he hated needles, especially when they included pinpricks, serums, and syringes.

When he unlocked the front door of his abode and stepped inside, a wave of nervousness crashed over the black-haired person, and the emotion reached a climax when he shut the door and turned around to see his father's hard eyes staring down at him, unfading and with the essence of antagonism right behind them. "Hello, Kakuzu," he half-crooned malevolently, lifting himself off of his resting place on a wall behind him. "Home so soon?"

The son, unnerved, stuttered a little as he tried to formulate a liable excuse. "Um, y-yeah…I was feeling much better, so they kind of…let me go early," he answered, accompanying his lie with a sweetly embarrassed smile.

Takeshi shook his head, goaded by his child's aptness to fib. "That's funny," he replied, slightly sarcastic, "because I just got a call from the hospital. They said that they found that physician-doctor lying on the floor in a bloody mess in a corner of your room with large holes pierced through his naval and throat. They told me that you weren't there, either, and to be on the lookout for you and anyone with bizarre circular weapons. Could those punctures in your sleeves be of any relation?" he asked with a lazy-angry undertone, pointing to Kakuzu's lower arm.

The young Asian pulled the arms of the sweatshirt down to draw less attention the ripped fabric and cast his gaze downward as he received the same speech he had heard more than a million times from his father before: "Kakuzu, you can't be doing this! You need to keep you temper under control; we can't afford having attention drawn to us. Not to mention that fact that you _murdered _an unsuspecting civilian. To say the least, I'm very disappointed in you."

"But, Tou-san," the other male started meekly, "they were going to keep me there to run test on me and use me as a guinea pig. I _had _to do something, and my emotions got the best of me. I'm really sorry, but you know how much I hate tests and needles." He hung his head in an act of humility. "Please forgive me."

His dad rolled his eyes and took a deep breath, breathing out as he crouched down to his son's eye level and stroked a clump of hair behind Kakuzu's ear, whispering, "I'm not mad at you," in a soft tone of voice as a tear rolled down the boy's cheek. "I know you didn't mean it. Still, we _do_ need to keep things under wraps for now, okay? All I'm asking is that you exercise that abundance of self-control that I know you have more."

Kakuzu nodded, another droplet finding its way down to his chin. "Yes, sir," he said sadly, stepping back and ambling over to the stairwell to go up to his room.

The boy let out a hissing cuss as his bedroom door closed with a definite 'click' behind him. He should have thought that St. Ignatius's would find out about the dead physician sooner or later, and that somehow he would be linked to the crime. Kakuzu hadn't really done it in cold blood, since he had been intoxicated in a blind rage, so it wasn't technically _murder_; the exact term was involuntary manslaughter. His patriarch had been right, nonetheless: their family didn't need the extra attention. And, if the government courts caught wind of his weird seams, they would order some research done onto them without question, the exact reason why he had committed the crime in the first place, and he would be in even deeper trouble if his fury kicked in again.

No, he couldn't let that happen. If he was forced to participate in such examinations, he would immediately become infuriated and get himself into even bigger trouble, not to mention the ostracized status he would earn himself. And, if the judges and government officials demanded an investigation, they would most likely find his father's Jashinist-hunting gear, and then Kakuzu would be sent to live with his mother instead. (He shuddered at the thought.)

Falling back onto his bed, he began to contemplate how to tell Hidan about his care. His eyes trailed idly and glazed-over throughout the space, analyzing the various media at his disposal: should he do it in a note? An email? With hints? Notes from gay guys were often creepy, he realized, as were emails, and hints usually didn't get the point across. Kakuzu hit his brow and sighed loudly; this was going to be very, VERY difficult, especially with the hospital incident under his belt. Being different sucked.

* * *

Yay! IC Kuzu! …Then it went right back to OOC. Ah wells, more to come, and that IC bit was VERY fun to write. Hope you all enjoyed my abuse of colons, semicolons, and italics, too.

Snow days are an author's best friend, people. Never forget that. XD


	12. The Beginning of the Web Weaving

Ah, how it's been a while/I'm quite apologetic because I've been absent/I was busy getting my ass kicked by life, algebra class, and Kristal yelling in my ear to update. XP (If any of you can decode that and figure out the song it's based off of, I shall be one impressed author. 0.0)

They got rid of all of my dash-breaks. I am mad at them, but I was trying to ease away from the dashes anyways, so I guess it's all okay.

Don't own any pop-culture references, and don't own any of the characters except DeAnn and the Bringer of Darkness.

* * *

Kakuzu snapped awake at the sudden ring of a metal pan hitting the tiled floor beneath it. Groaning deep within his throat and slapping his hand to his face, the odd occurrence figured itself out: Fuyume was leaving. Thank God. But, of course, his mother wouldn't be able to make any type of acceptable exit unless she made some sort of loud crashing sound, just to make sure people knew that she was going.

He laid face-down under his covers for a few minutes, clumps of long, black bangs crushed up against his eyelids as he began to drift back and forth from consciousness to slumber. It was Saturday, the _weekend, _for God's sake! He deserved to be able to sleep in, especially since some others lazed around in bed until early in the afternoon. On the other hand, his mother was now out of his hair for a full six months, giving him time to catch up on the hours of rest he had missed because of his parents' constant bickering.

An hour or so later, Kakuzu slumped down the impossibly steep and foreboding staircase, still in a morning haze. He hadn't been able to fall asleep for more than a few minutes after his rude awakening beforehand, and his head felt heavy and unbalancing because of it. He would have spent more time in bed if it weren't for the facts that simply lying around was incredibly boring and that sleeping in was proven to make a person more tired than they usually were.

The young teenager slid into a chair that was placed around a perfectly square kitchen table, still in his slight hangover state. A morning talkshow blared from a radio placed on the peninsula to his left, competing with the a whisk's soft but persistent 'tsk' against the side of a skillet, both telltale signs that his father was making scrambled eggs for breakfast again. "'Morning, Kakuzu," Takeshi greeted happily, adding more audibility to the already disarraying sounds.

The boy hummed loudly, allowing the tone to crackle. "Kaa-san woke me up this morning," he grumbled, nesting his forehead on the hand he placed on the wooden surface in front of him. "Now I'm tired."

"Good. It'll teach you a lesson," his dad replied, continuing to beat the egg yolks and whites into a yellow mess meant for frying, "not to kill doctors, come home and expect it to be like nothing happened."

Kakuzu grunted in response.

Tou-san tapped the whisk against the edge of the pan to get the excess goo back into the basin. "I got a call from the hospital earlier this morning," he continued. "They asked if you were safe and if I'd seen any suspicious characters roaming about. I told them that you had returned shortly after they had called the first time, and that no, I hadn't seen any weird people around, and that the killer had attacked after you left, since you hadn't seen anything either." Another chair scraped across the floor as Takeshi sat down beside his son. "I'm taking a lot of chances here," he said, more earnest than he had been earlier, "so I hope you appreciate it."

Kakuzu looked up from his downcast position, straight at his father's stern but forgiving expression. "Tou-san, I said I was sorry, and that quack had it coming to him," he stated simply, shifting his gaze away. "There's nothing that can be done now, so we can just drop it and move on."

"I don't think you understand the extent of this situation, Kakuzu, The investigations they do on this kind of stuff are intense and thorough. Even if they would immediately trace the crime back to you, they'd do background checks on the both of us, and the slightest whiff of anything out of the norm would set them off to _more _snooping, and sooner or later you would be found guilty." Putting a hand on the younger Asian's shoulder, he kept going on with his drawn-out speech. "It was okay when this happened when you were younger, simply because the authorities don't suspect a child of murder, but now you're able to judge and control your temper."

"I already said that I'm sorry," Kakuzu reiterated, sitting up and leaning back on the seat. "Besides, coroners and detective and all the people like that only work for money. If they can't find anything weird by the end of the first investigation, then they'll give up and classify it as a cold case. And, last time I checked, we were pretty well concealed, right?" He finished the last line hesitantly, knowing that his dad would be angry at his insubordinate attitude.

The remark had earned him a fierce glare and a vigorous shove, but Takeshi eventually released his facial stress with an exasperated sigh. "I'm just trying to look out for you," he conveyed in a defeated manner, getting back to his cooking. "I just wish you'd take this a little more seriously."

XXXXXXXXXX

"So, then Kurt turns to me and says-"

Hidan rolled his eyes and silently gritted his teeth in vexation as voices from the kitchen floated out into the adjacent living room, where he sat comfortably on a plush couch and spooned cereal to himself. Now that Terrance lived with them, he and DeAnn were always talking, mostly about mundane and insignificant things, leaving both Hidan and respectable intellect out of the equation. Not that he cared much –it wasn't like he actually wanted to discuss the variety of meaningless topics they often debated– but he was particularly selfish in the sense that he craved attention, and it upset him that the once-devoted-solely-to-him DeAnn was now splicing her time unevenly with someone else.

Placing his now-empty bowl on the end-table situated next to the sofa, Hidan's lavender eyes traveled around the room while his ears were tuned in on the Saturday-morning programming currently being broadcasted on the television across the way, contemplating how to spend his free day. It was beautiful out, partially cloudy and a decent temperature; maybe he'd take advantage of that and go outside for a while. Or, he had rented that movie the other day...perhaps he'd lounge around and watch that for a while. And then there was the ever-present possibility of performing a ritual...

Hidan pondered this dilemma for a while, trying desperately to make a decision before noon. He chose the third; after all, Jashin-sama was the one who allowed the day to become as fair and sunny as it had, not to mention permitted the heathens who had acted in the movie to live, so it was only right to thank him for it. The Evil One (Terrance) was also taking DeAnn to some sort of all-day social gathering as well, giving the cult member plenty of time to complete and clean up after his gory sacrament.

Skittishly watching the indigo BMV back out of his driveway a few hours later, Hidan hurriedly locked all of the possible entrances and got to work on the preparations for the ceremonial rite he was about to perform –it called of incense, water, and several different types of powdered herbs–and since it was considered one of the most important and sacred custom of the Jashinists' sect, he conveniently kept most of the needed ingredients safely in several boxes scattered around the house inconspicuously and in easy reach.

Everything was in its place soon enough, and he began the lengthy process by smearing the thin paste made from the water and herbs over his chest and lying down in the middle of his faction symbol, drawn with blood on the cold, hard, wooden bedroom floor on which he was going to perform the ritual on. Stabbing at his right shoulder in a gruff manner and digging his pike as deep as his forcefulness would tolerate, giving the substance a way into his body and giving him the usefulness of its effects.

Though it hurt like hell, Hidan continued, pushing his weapon of minor carnage down and around his naval and bringing it back up to his left shoulder, leaving a thick, ragged, and torn line through his flesh that secreted the sweet, maroon liquid that most Jashinists craved like they would heroin. He let out a wail of agony in response to the paste entering him via the wound he had just made for himself, but he bit it down after a few seconds. It pleased God when slaughter was performed in his name, and Hidan shared in that pleasure as the suppressed seventh heaven bubbled through the throe.

Slackening his tightly-clenched fists and facial expression, he took a breath and brought in the sickly-sweet aroma of the incense with it, lulled by its familiar scent. He could definitely stay here a while.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu took slow, deliberate steps, one per sidewalk square, shifting his weight with every movement. It was quite possibly the best day of the year today weatherwise, and even if he as only going to the park a few streets away from his house, he decided to make a one-player game out of his short commute. Moreover, walking like that was fun, and being as much of a child at heart as Kakuzu was, that alone was reason to act foolishly.

When he reached his destination, no one was there –no little kids playing around in the larger-than -necessary sandbox, no elderly retirees strolling around the gravel-paved path that serpentined through the playground, and no teenagers leaving their marks on the abundant benches and poles with markers and spray paint. Strange, taking into account the day of the week and pleasant (as opposed to the normally muggy) temperatures, but Kakuzu wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Taking a seat beneath the shady leaves of some sort of deciduous tree, he sat back on his elbows and tossed his hair out of his face, watching as the light flickered, altered in shape, and intensified as it filtered through the tree's branches, whom of which were subject to the tenuous breeze blowing through them. A flash of orange was caught among the small, yellow dandelion patch a few inches away from him, and before long the flash moved again, introducing itself as a monarch butterfly as it landed on the tree's trunk just above Kakuzu's head.

Mildly amused by the fragile creature's presence, the boy began to discourse with it. "Hello, little butterfly," he cooed softly in his native tongue, lolling his head backwards to see the insect better. "How are you?"

The monarch replied with a flap of its wings. "Oh, I see," Kakuzu continued, finding his trivial actions refreshing. "Hey, what do you know about relationships?" he asked, a hint of dry humor in his voice. Though he knew the animal couldn't talk back, or know about relationships, for that matter, he knew that he often thought best out loud, and that talking to something that couldn't talk back may help him figure out a way to solve his problem regarding Hidan. "Stupid question, I know, but I'm having a bit of trouble with starting mine."

"If you want to start a relationship, you should tell the person you desire first."

Kakuzu whipped his head around at the sound of the English-spoken sentence, out-of-place in his Japanese monologue. "Wh-who's there? How did you understand me?" he queried openly and in the previous voice's language, unsure of the tone's actual position.

Something in the shadows produced by the seemingly endless foliage shifted, only to step into the light and reveal its identity to be Pein, all of his piercings glinting uncomfortably. "I didn't," he stated loftily, letting a chunk of ungelled orange tresses fall over his forehead as his focus transferred to the other boy, "but I happen to know a thing or two about the new kid."

The young Asian shot him a confused look as the enigmatic character took up a seat next to him. "Like what?" he probed, sullen that someone had known his 'secret' before he did.

Pein's lip twitched, almost as if he was holding back a smile, and laid down on his back, hands clasped behind his head. "Like that our poor little newcomer has a crush on the one person that he'd have no chance with," he said, "and that he needed to confer with some type of wildlife to help himself some to a sensible decision."

Kakuzu laughed colorlessly in agreement, closing his eyes to hide the slight tears of embarrassment and to keep his temper under control. "Yeah, I guess, but almost everyone knows that the new kid isn't worth fussing over." He hoped that this gesture would deter the subject of the current conversation.

Evidently, his attempt failed. "Yes, well, people such as I have nothing else better to do with our time than to investigate new students," the nonconformist mentioned curtly, obviously determined not to stray from the theme of the chitchat. "And, from what I just gathered, it seems as though you're looking for some advice as to what to do about your situation."

The other sighed, defeated. This guy was not the average thirteen-year-old sleuth. "Whatever you say. You're the interrogator; _you _get to make the assumptions and inferences."

Pein gave a blunt nasal sigh, seemingly irritated by Kakuzu's implied apathy. "Well, if I was you, I'd just go out and say it to whomever it is you want to say it to. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results." He got to his feet and began to leave as he continued: "Just keep in mind that there's an equally distinct chance that you'll be rejected, so watching yourself wouldn't be much of a bad idea."

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan felt his breathing stabilize more and more as the minutes passed, just a mere fifteen minutes after he had woken up for the ritual-induced coma. His body's high speed of self-regeneration had permitted that; it hadn't allowed him to open his eyes or sit up, though, because of the immense resistance his torso protested with.

Unable to inspect the curious wound with four of his five senses, he took the underside of his hand to check out how it had healed. As he applied pressure to the side of the gigantic cut, he immediately drew his appendage back as sharp twinge traveled down his arm. It was crystal-clear that Jashin-sama didn't want him poking through his ailment, since this pain lacked the underlying delectation that other types possessed. This was an unwanted ache, something that only heathen masochists exposed themselves to.

Soon Hidan's impatient nature got the best of him and he forced himself to sit up, hissing a string of crude profanities through his teeth while doing so. This must be the reason why the sacrament was considered especially holy and sacred: it hurt, and no one wanted to do it more than once every year. He picked himself up off of the ground with more energy than he wished to exhume at one time, holding onto the bedpost in front of him for balance as his respiratory system worked overtime to supply him with the oxygen he needed for survival, and it almost prevented him from hearing his name being whispered from just outside his door. "Oh my God, Hidan."

He looked up through his bloodied hair to see the worst possible scenario unfold before him: there was DeAnn, staring back at him with a choking gasp in the process of completion and a countenance that reflected the normal infidel reaction to his ceremonies, including fear, disgust, and disbelief. With a strengthening breath, Hidan stood up straight and relaxed the anxiety that was growing inside of him enough to smile halfheartedly. "Hey, DeAnn. Home so soon?" he croaked; his voiced had become grating from the extreme inhalation of the incense.

She gulped and recoiled in response, and he reached out a friendly palm to calm and reassure her, but it was to no avail; the hand he had reached out with was the same one that he had stuck into his injury, thus making her cringe more. "DeAnn, I'm okay—"

"What the hell are you?!"

The sudden exclamation made the time directly following it become awkwardly silent and saddening. Hidan hadn't expected that from DeAnn, despite the rather vivid and unusual reactions he had gotten from previous foster families. He had always thought of her to be different from them, in view of her odd behaviors and attitudes. That, however, was clearly not the case.

Feeling both betrayed and antagonized, the young cult member bolted for the front door, running straight past DeAnn in the process. He didn't care that he was barefoot, bloody, or bare-chested; the only thing that bothered him in the least was the feeling of carpet, tile, and eventually sidewalk beneath his feet and the tears that stung at the corners of his eyelids.

Equivalent to the time after Kakuzu's dad had held him at gunpoint, Hidan didn't know where he was going or think about what he would do when he got there. He just kept running, ignoring the dark red trail he left behind himself and the feeling in his gut that told him to return to his foster home and passively accept the punishment that awaited him. No, he told himself, he needed to get away. Keep going, keep going.

Hidan was so focused on his movement that he hadn't noticed the slight pinch in his forearm, the dartlike pin sticking out of his tricep, or the fact that he was slowing down with each step. But, the barbiturate-filled strike caught up with him in time, and within a few minutes he found himself sprawled out onto the pavement, face-first in a puddle. Funny, he hadn't remembered it raining, nor had he realized how dark it had become until he had turned his head to breathe while laying in the groundwater. Perhaps his ritual had taken up more time than he had originally planned.

Releasing the little control he still held in his muscles, he let himself fall into a deep, troubled sleep with a duo of conclusions buzzing faintly through his head: DeAnn now thought of him as a freak, and he would soon be leaving Burbank, maliciously removed by one of those Jashin-damned social workers.

Being different sucked.

* * *

Gah. You all know what I'm going to say. DX

If your pen names/screen names are AlmightySponge, Medicinal Biscuit, or luk33ang3l, kindly send a review my way. Not begging for them or anything, but I've messaged you all several times, and none of you have responded, which either means you're busy people or that you hate me. D: So, please specify one of the two; you're all beginning to worry me.

I have no excuse for the lateness of the chapter, except that warm weather turns me into a lazybutt and that I had no real inclination to write for a while.


	13. Coming Clean

Holy shite. It's been two months and some odd days without an update. 0.o; Sorry, peeps, but my muse left me for the schoolyear and the beginning of summer, and I couldn't write anything decent for my life. Thankfully, my muse is now back.

The song last chapter was "We're So Starving" by Panic at the Disco, cuz I'm just a geek that way.

* * *

_Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump._

Kakuzu stared aimlessly through the glass walls of the RTA bus stop he was taking shelter in, watching as the raindrops hit the outside of the transparent box and trickled down the sides of said box once their paths were disrupted. Though the plastic bags he held at his sides were cutting into his hand because of the heavy contents they held, he still couldn't help but stand motionless as the rivulets of water raced, merged with, and criss-crossed each other on their way to the ground.

Phasing out to concentrate on his slight reflection rather than the rain, Kakuzu wondered why his dad had sent him on an 'emergency grocery trip' when all of the items he was asked to pick up were stockpiled in their refrigerator. Maybe Takeshi was losing it; although Kakuzu wasn't exactly sure on his dad's age, he was certain that constant paranoia (and ailment his father had had ever since the incident seven years ago) would take a toll on an aging person's psychological health. Or, perhaps, the patriarch had just wanted to get rid of him for fifteen-some minutes. Why this would be necessary, the Asian had no idea; but, then again, Kakuzu had never really understood his dad in the first place, so he was in no position to be coining any odd behavior.

His train of though was disturbed by more loud thumping sounds, signaling the beginning of a stronger rainstorm. Kakuzu gave a low groan as he noticed the streams of water becoming wider and flowing faster. Taking a seat on the bench behind him and placing his parcels down at his feet, he closed his eyes and breathed as a truck whizzed by. He was stuck there, at least until the rain let up; might as well make himself comfortable.

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan snapped awake to a sharp pain radiating from his upper arm unexpectedly, his body jolting in response. Panting from the scare, his eyes darted around the room frantically, trying to regain his bearings. He was in a basement, and an unfinished one at that; its floor was a cold, hard concrete one and the walls were a bare plaster. At one end of the cellar was a large vat of some sort of clear liquid, and in the center stood a startled, but nonetheless scary, Kakuzu's dad with a small dartlike needle in his hand.

After the initial shock dissipated, the man's expression relaxed into that of pure malice, and as he sauntered over to the young zealot, Hidan tried as hard as he could to keep his breathing steady and his face blank. In the current situation there was no need to encourage any unnecessary action.

Revealing an undersized knife in his left hand, the bigot pinned Hidan against the wall directly behind him and pulled the keg of liquid over, dipping the blade into it and holding the knife to the cult member's throat. "Quiet," he chided in a raspy voice as he led the sharp metal down from its starting point to the boy's collarbone, blood seeping out of the cut as if Hidan was a leaking swimming pool. Cussing to himself, the zealot immediately recognized the fluid: rubbing alcohol. For some reason, it delayed a Jashinist's body's natural regeneration cycle and increased hemorrhage; it was often used during rituals that required the taking of one's life through blood loss.

Hidan silently prayed for his God's assistance as he stared, frozen with fear, at the older male cutting a square into the the captive's arm and hacking out the skin, leaving a bleeding, raw hole in its place. Biting his lip to keep from screaming in pain, the boy gritted his teeth as the same procedure was repeated on his other arm, then on his bare chest, and again on his maw. Subsequently, he felt himself being lifted and put into what seemed to be the barrel of alcohol, though it was a bit hard to tell since his eyes had been squeezed shut and his head had been compulsorily submerged into the poisonous disinfectant.

When he was finally allowed to surface, that is, when the ramming force released its grip, Hidan gasped for air and let out a minute squeal. Good god Jashin, did it sting! Trying desperately not to let tears flow, the prisoner began taking long, deep breaths, struggling to calm his lividly beating heart. The last thing he wanted to do was to give that sadist any more pleasure out of the experience than he was already getting.

Hidan tensed up as he felt himself being hoisted out of the vat, expecting another type of Jashinist-effective mutilation, his mind whirring with endless possibilities—was there going to be another variation of a knifing, or did it have anything to do with an acidic goo of a little-known variety? Or maybe the adult was just going to shoot him with a formaldehyde-laced bullet. The cult member was almost wishing for the latter; it was inevitable that he had no way of escaping, and the prospect of getting it over with was becoming more and more appealing.

Oddly, he was met with something completely unexpected: his captor had taken a grip on both of the boy's arms and held them up against their respective body, and, slowly, he dug his thumbnails into the sides of the cut-away wounds, pushing them farther out and enlarging their boundaries. Hissing a string of low, gravelly foreign-sounding words at his prisoner, the bigot's grasp became tighter with each syllable, and although Hidan had absolutely no idea what was being said to him, he knew that it wasn't the least bit polite.

The younger male gave a frightened blink at the floor as he saw large fragments of skin—_his _skin—fall to the floor as the adult applied more force, and the scene became even more disturbing when his cognitive sense came up with a name for the state of affairs: he was being skinned alive. Hidan conquered the urge to scream in terror yet again, this time unsuccessful in the prevention of watering eyes. He was seriously going to die, and he couldn't do a thing to fight back, not with his arms incapacitated and his legs refusing to follow the multiple orders he was sending them to kick and flail. It appeared that death was eminent, and there was no point in fighting back, he deduced, relaxing into his captor's clutch.

XXXXXXXXXX

Bolting from the edge of his driveway to his front door, Kakuzu huffed as his need for extra oxygen became more and more apparent. He had run straight from the bus stop to his house, through the rain, with the plastic bags clutched to his chest, and it was a mere understatement that he was exhausted.

The boy took long, trudging steps as he entered his home, rainwater dripping from his clothes by the bucketful and hair matted across his forehead in the most unattractive way. Exhaling dramatically, he slumped into a recliner in his living room and lolled his head back; it was good to be home. The only thing wrong about the situation was the dead calm, a silence that would normally denote the timeframe before a murder in a horror movie. This silence made Kakuzu feel uneasy; his dad was never this quiet on a regular basis, since he usually had the television blaring or music playing from a radio. Apparently, something wasn't right.

Where was his father? It was clear that he wasn't on the first floor; Takeshi had no reason to go upstairs because their house had a ground-floor master bedroom. That left the basement, where he kept all of his Jashinist-hunting gear. Kakuzu swallowed hard as he came to an upsetting conclusion, and without thinking he made a mad dash down his staircase, practically leaping as he skipped steps while descending. "Tou-san!" he yelled, his voice accompanied with a breathy expire. "Tou-san! What are you-"

The young adolescent stopped dead in both his tracks and his verbal exclamation as he laid eyes on the bizarre scene: there was his father, crouched in a corner and holding a white-haired victim in a vicegrip, pressing at the injured party's wounds in order to coerce the large gashes to spread beyond their original limits. And even though the prisoner's chin was against his chest and huge patches of dermis had been torn away, Kakuzu knew exactly who it was.

"Tou-san!" he bellowed, louder this time, pulling his dad's shoulder back. "What are you doing to him? Tou-san!" The deviate could almost sense the panic rise inside of him; what if he was too late? What then?

The older Asian stood up, releasing his hold on Hidan's body and turned to face his son, baring a countenance nothing short of ire. "What are _you_ doing?" he asked, angry as hell. "Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"

Kakuzu met Takeshi's gaze with an equally irritated glare, though his was created only to mask his extreme sadness and the feeling of betrayal. "Why are you hurting him?" he demanded, rejecting the crackle that almost wrestled its way into his objection. "What makes you so sure that torturing an innocent boy will prove anything other than that you're mentally sick?"

"Kakuzu, I've explained this in detail to you more times than I care to count. I'm doing it because it brings an end to bad morals-"

"And only creates new bad morals! Tou-san, do you seriously believe that killing people who are different than you is going to make the world a better place? If so, you've got a lot of murders to commit!" the son countered, his fists in tight balls. Why did his dad have to be so damned one-track?

Shoving and knocking the younger Asian to the concrete below, Takeshi pivoted on his heels and resumed tormenting his captive. "Mind your own business," he growled through his teeth, now simply pulling out Hidan's skin from the underside rather than undermining it with his nails like he had been before.

Kakuzu's fists tightened and produced small half-moons on his palms as he lay there, infuriated. How dare he push his own son to the ground? How _dare _he even _attempt _to harm Hidan? As his fury began to burn within his entire cadaver, he sat up and instantaneously lunged at his father, threads ripping through his hoodie and ready to attack. Tou-san sensed and tried to throw off the minor foray, smacking the aggressor on the breastbone with a sharp backhand; but the boy kept at it, and soon he had ripped Takeshi off of the heavily-marred child. Not wanting to leave the job unfinished, Kakuzu kicked the older man in the back as hard as his current physical status would let him, causing the patriarch to flip over and land squarely on his head, resulting in a sickening 'crack' resounding off the plaster walls.

The black-haired kid came to his senses at the noise, gawking at the predicament he had produced: his dad, face-down on the pavement, blood seeping from a laceration on his skull, and Hidan, laying on his side blankly gaping forward, allowing himself to shake slightly as his lesions began to clot. Cursing inwardly, he took Hidan up into a piggy-back hold and made his way up the stairwell and out the door as fast as his muscles permitted, but not before pausing briefly to call 911 on the landline on the first floor. His dad _was _a misguided, radically violent activist, but he didn't deserve to die in a basement alone.

XXXXXXXXXX

Images flashed before Hidan's eyes, every one more confusing and grotesque than the last: Kakuzu and his dad arguing. Kakuzu being pushed down. Kakuzu peeling his dad off of Hidan with thick, black tentacle-things and anteceding to have his skull cracked open on the concrete floor.

It just didn't make sense. Kakuzu was such a placid, agreeable person (most of the time). What would suddenly piss him off enough to actually _assault _his own dad? There must have been a side to the story that Hidan didn't know. Accepting this, he fell asleep, head nudged into his carrier's neck and arms slung over the carrier's torso. Surprisingly, it was a very comfortable position.

--

"Hey, there," Kakuzu greeted as Hidan blinked to consciousness. "Have a nice nap?"

The cult zealot looked around with the fervor of an unmotivated sloth, realizing that he was back in his bedroom, lying in his own bed. The other boy sat backwards in the swivel-chair that normally rested near his computer desk, leaning over the back of the piece of furniture and smiling down at him. "Glad to see you're okay. I was starting to worry."

"I'm okay," Hidan repeated, disbelieving the obviously true statement. "I'm okay because…you saved me," he continued, still trying to assemble the information he had into a coherent story.

Kakuzu nodded, still beaming. "Well, I think 'rescued' is a better word for it, but yeah."

"You saved—er, rescued me, with black threads coming out of your arms…they helped you tear your dad off of me…" the white-haired kid mumbled, once again making things 'click' in his mind. "Hey, what were those things, anyways?" he inquired, eyeing the gaps in his rescuer's sweatshirt sleeves. "The rope-things?"

With this question, Kakuzu immediately shrank behind the chair's back. "I think you were drugged or something, since I never had any threads or whatever. I just kind of tackled him without giving it any thought…" The lie practically oozed with its own falsity.

When Hidan sat up and crossed his arms in protest, Kakuzu sighed nasally, defeated in view of the fact that his bluff hadn't been bought. "Okay, then," he said, taking off both his now-tattered and blood-encrusted hoodie and t-shirt, showing his bare upper body and the bulky black stitches that adorned it; they intersected and paralleled each other in a chaotic manner, breathing and moving as their host did. "These are what you saw. They can…come out and pretty much tear through everything organic."

The young cult member gasped, reaching out to touch a seam on his arm whose color was more of a burgundy than a black. Caressing the thread with the side of his thumb, Hidan ventured, "Why's this one different?" as he began to fill up with sympathy for his friend: if it weren't for the threads distracting the eye, Kakuzu would definitely be someone of a bigger, more muscular build than the average Joe.

"It's fresh. Every time I lose my temper, a couple new stitches appear. It's discouraging, given my anger issues." The young Asian pulled himself away from the Jashinist's contact, averting his attention away from the other. "See, I've always had a really bad problem with keeping my anger under control. It's gotten better as I've grown up, but it's still there and alive, and I have to be careful about which fights I pick, because some may provoke me more than others." He breathed deeply, visibly trying to keep his composure. "I'm sure you think I'm a freak, don't you?"

"No, not a freak," Hidan corrected, shaking his head from side to side. "More of a human than anything else. People get angry, and people have their moments. It's a fact of life," he said, shrugging nonchalantly. "No worries concerning that. Pertaining to those threads, though…there may be some worry involved."

"What? Why?" the black-haired kid asked, snapping into an upright position from the slouch he was positioned in beforehand. "Why would I worry about these? They've never hurt me before."

The other boy shrugged again. "I could tell you why, but that would mean I'd have to kill you in order to keep it a secret. Let's just say it's a Jashinist curse put on heathen children." Hidan rubbed his neck as he watched Kakuzu's expression go from confusion to something like horror. "Oh, relax. For some, the 'curse' would be considered a blessing, but like I said, I can't tell you. Who did that to you, anyway?"

"Hell if I know; I never got a good look at any of their faces. All I really remember is that there were these weird guys walking around the playground by my school, and I guess I went up to one of them and asked who they were, because before I knew it I was being taken away to this hideout-thing that resembled a chapel. There, I blacked out, and when I woke up I was like this." He gestured to himself. "Good story, right?" he queried sarcastically.

The other shook his head sadly, as if ashamed. "Stupid minorities. Prancing around like the own the world," he said sourly, metaphorically spitting at the idea of the minority groups. "Well, I'm sorry, but we're not all like that. No proper self-respecting Jashinist would do anything like that to a little kid unless there was a huge prerequisite telling him to do so." Craning his arms over his head, he contracted his back and stretched. "Is that why your dad doesn't like me?"

Kakuzu nodded again, this time more apologetic. "Well, it's more the entire religion than just you, but yes. He's got it in his head that you're all out to kill the entire human race or something, regardless of how many times I've try to convince him otherwise." He hid his face in his hands and moaned. "Hidan, I'm really sorry. All that's happened to you is my fault…"

Laughing openly at his friend's ridiculous assumption, Hidan waved his hand around, signaling a good natured-mood. "Kakuzu, don't be stupid," he reconciled, shifting into a kneeling position on his bed. "Unless your dad sent out S.W.A.T. teams or whatever all over the globe to eradicate Jashinists specifically, you're all good."

The Asian's blank face suggested otherwise. "Actually, he did," Kakuzu explained, evidently mortified. "How he managed it, I have no idea, but I guess he wanted to make sure that it wouldn't happen to anyone else again, and…" he trailed off, seemingly deterred by the zealot's glower.

Hidan couldn't believe it. Kakuzu, the heathen who took Deidara's locker, the son of a broken family, the _savior _was the source of his misery throughout his life. _Kakuzu_ was the reason he was in foster care, the reason that he had been antagonized by a crazy forty-some whack-job _and _the reason that he was almost turned into a pelt. Needless to say, he was feeling a bit more than deceived; he felt downright double-crossed. "Oh, save it. Don't even start-" he barked, up until his interjection was interrupted by the presence of Kakuzu's lips interlocked in his own.

* * *

Mwahaha. We have made it. :D

I apologize for any slow or choppy parts of this update; it has been eight or so weeks since I've written anything of importance. Don't hate me. ):

Don't own a S.W.A.T. team or anything. Seriously.


	14. Repercussion

Does anyone else find it incredibly amusing that last year around this time I was pumping out a new chapter every two days, and this year all I could come up with was a oneshot and two chapters? For some reason, that makes me laugh. xD

I'd like to thank my dearest beta, Medicinal Biscuit, for all of her work with making this chapter better. Love you to death. :3

* * *

Kakuzu pulled out of the kiss and instinctively bit his lower lip, watching Hidan's expression morph from that of a surprised child to the rage of an offended minority. Had he really overstepped the line this time, or would the other even care? "Hidan, I—" he began, though he stopped himself from finishing the notion. If he knew the young masochist as well as he thought he did, a poorly-worded yet sincere apology was only going to worsen the situation.

Hidan closed his eyes for a bit, most likely to regain his composure, but when he opened them again he was all but composed. "What the fucking hell?!" he screamed, rising to a stance on his mattress and shooting his arms out behind him. "What the fuck was that?!"

"A…kiss," the Asian replied sheepishly, cheeks burning at an understandably high temperature. It appeared as though he had picked an incredibly bad time to come out of the closet.

"A kiss," the cult member repeated, almost as if to process the phrase. "A kiss. A kiss. A kiss. A. Kiss. A. _Kiss. A KISS!" _he yelled, kicking the chair Kakuzu had been sitting in and sending the child himself tumbling onto the floor. "A kiss! What the fuck, a _kiss!" _Hidan stepped off of his fluffy pedestal in a hopping fashion, his loathing a visible aura around him. "You think that you can prejudice against me and then go and kiss me?" he asked through his teeth, breathing deep and hard. "You think you can hunt my kind and then expect me to look the other way? You think you can _ruin my life _and expect me to even remotely _like _you? Is that how it is?!"

The other boy drew in his legs and assumed an upright position, meekly bowing his head the entire time. "I haven't done any of that," he defended quietly, blinking back tears. Somehow, he'd pictured this event going a bit more smoothly. "I apologize for my ignorance."

The cult member gave a distasteful sneer as the black-haired deviate continued to produce saline. "Oh, so now you're _crying?! _Great, just great! Absolutely wonderful! I get abducted, tortured, and molested, all in one day! On top of that, the pedophile involved is actually crying to try and get my sympathy! How incredibly _amazing!"_ Pacing around the room, the zealot spat vulgarities at the other: "You God-damned mother-fucking faggot! Dick-loving wimpy-ass _fairy! _Get the fuck out! I never want to see your fucking face ever again!"

Kakuzu nodded, slowly and silently, while taking the liberty of slightly sniffling as he exited the bedroom. "Understood," he whispered hesitantly, afraid of another attack from his love interest. So much for an understanding, he thought sourly to himself, choking down the metallic taste in his mouth.

--

Staring at the sidewalk below him as he walked, Kakuzu wiped his eyes with a hoodie sleeve. He had no idea why he was taking Hidan's reaction so personally. After all, most people would respond like that following a kiss from their own sex. And, taking into account what the white-haired kid had endured in the past twelve hours, it was predictable that he would be in an offsetting mood.

Even so, he couldn't help but feel as if something deep inside his chest, something that was otherwise unreachable, had been viciously torn to shreds with a variety of sharp tools. Rejection hurt, and though he'd considered himself prepared for the likely outcome, it wasn't in the least bit bearable. Maybe it was because it had come from Hidan; the boy did have a history of blowing things out-of-proportion and overreacting. Or, maybe it was because both parties in the situation were male, since that alone would set some people off. Well, whatever the case, the relationship Kakuzu had hoped for wasn't going to happen, and the only logical thing to do was to forget about it.

He sighed as he agreed with himself on the unfavorable decision. Although he wanted to be able to express his emotions, it was obvious that the other didn't feel the same. Rather than push the subject and become a nuisance, the best thing to do would be to let go. Besides, Hidan never wanted to see him again. That was more than a sufficient reason to give up.

When he returned to his house, a note had been taped onto his front door:

_To whom it may concern,_

_Takeshi has been taken to St. Ignatius's Hospital for medical treatment. Though his cranial injuries are serious, it is fairly certain he will make it._

Kakuzu took a breath, partially, relieved. He hadn't killed his father; no, he had merely incapacitated him long enough to get Hidan to safety. That was a plus. Despite Takeshi's past actions, the young Asian loved his dad (uncharacteristically for his age) albeit the fact that said parent had put both his son and his son's acquaintances in danger, and the last thing he wanted for his aforementioned Tou-san was death.

Notes were ripped from their original locations and stairs were climbed as he sullenly brooded over what had happened: why he had opened up to the cult zealot in spite of Hidan's tendency to use personal information against people, why he had taken such drastic and bold actions, why he hadn't contained his sorrow better, why Hidan didn't want him…

Dropping himself onto his bed, Kakuzu buried his face into his pillow and let out exhausted bouts of tears sporadically. He hated all of it, the misunderstanding, the aversion, the false assumptions; none of them made any sense, and none of them were beneficiary in either side of the equation. Why couldn't anyone see it like he did?

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan was stilling fuming minutes after Kakuzu had left; how dare he?! How dare that misbelieving, traitorous fairy even _think _of pulling a stunt like that, and while the object of his attention was weakened, no less! Deciding that it would be healthier for his mentality, he trudged down his staircase to get something to eat; for unknown reasons, the consumption of food seemed to calm him down.

As he approached the kitchen, an air of uncertainty surrounded him. He had been away long enough for DeAnn to contact his social worker several times, and, judging by the look on her face when she had walked in on his ritual, she wouldn't have wasted any time in doing so. With a sad breath, he entered his destination to await his doom; there was no point in putting it off.

He crossed the threshold to find his foster mother staring back at him, her eyes bloodshot and boring large purple marks underneath. "Hey, DeAnn," he muttered under his breath, moving past her to get to the refrigerator. "How goes it?"

"I called your social worker," she stated simply, gaze now overtly looking at the empty plate in front of her. "We talked for a while."

The zealot reached farther into the ice box, subconsciously hiding from the sentence he was sure to hear next. "What did he say?" he queried aimlessly, though he knew exactly what that damned societal employee had told her.

DeAnn sighed, moving the plate out of the way and propping her chin on the table with her fist. "It's not as much what he said as much as what I answered." She turned around in her chair to face the cult member. "Are you going to come and sit with me, or are you going to keep your head in the fridge for the rest of your life?"

Though the question held no tone of hostility, Hidan followed suit in a defeated manner, without anything in hand; he didn't want to make matters worse than they already were. Laying his head down onto the tabletop, he started to sob softly. Why couldn't that damn woman just say what she needed to? Why couldn't she make it quick? Why—and this was the bigger question—couldn't she just accept his practices and move on?

"Hidan, Hidan, please don't cry…" his foster mother cooed, rubbing his back gently. "It's okay that you're different. I understand."

"Yeah," he replied sarcastically, "and that's why you're still going to send me away, even if you "understand." Desperately trying to regulate his breathing, he continued ranting. "Don't try to tell me any shit like that. All you heathens are the same—all of you! Because when someone like me, someone individual, comes around, all you do is lie and say that you care when in reality you hate me!" Hidan let his forehead pass from resting on his wrist to the table beneath it. "That's what it all boils down to, isn't it? Hate and scorn…"

DeAnn continued to massage between his shoulder blades. "But I won't send you away," she retorted, laying her head in a fashion that would mimic his position. "That mean old man said that since I found out what you are, it'd be perfectly find to abandon you, but given your past record and the fact that I like you, I told him you were staying here, if you want."

"And what exactly am I, then? A freak? A monster? Some combination of the two?" he demanded fiercely, lifting his eyes to glower at the adult. "Or am I just a prize? 'Oh, guess what, I have a foster child back home that can stab his own heart and survive!'"

She shook her head. "No, silly, you're a person whose cells happen to divide faster than everyone else's." Removing her hand, she pulled his into a warm, cozy embrace. "I'm serious about staying here," his foster mother whispered, tightening her grip. "For real."

The boy exhaled, not sure what to make of the situation. He _did _want to stay in Burbank, but he didn't want to be discriminated against while residing there, either. "I'll stay," he promised uncertainly, "but only if you promise to give me enough space for what I need to do- metaphorically and physically- and only if you promise to refrain from judging me because of it."

DeAnn gave an over-exaggerated, curt nod. "Yes, sir," she replied playfully. Same old, same old.

--

Lifting a shirt from its place in his dresser drawer, Hidan couldn't help but smile as he put it on. For once in his life, he was staying somewhere, even after his religious beliefs had been found out. What made the situation even better was that the Bringer of Darkness had found himself another apartment and would no longer be lurking in the hallways of 4413 Marion Avenue. Yes, it was definitely a good day for him.

But, what about Kakuzu? He left the house crying due to the masochist's response to the display of affection, and his day had probably been ruined. Despite this, it wasn't Hidan's problem, with all due respect, and he wasn't about to ruin his own experience by fretting over something that wasn't his to worry about. The more he tried to forget it, ironically, the more he remembered, detail for detail, what had occurred earlier that day- and more specifically, how the accursed liplocking had felt. Hidan had never been kissed before, and in turn had no idea how it felt, but he was sure that the reaction he had gotten from Kakuzu's surprise attack wasn't what the real thing—a straight kiss, in Hidan's case—was supposed to feel. From what he knew, kisses were, hypothetically, comfortable and tame, and the one he experienced that morning was nothing like that. Instead, it had seemed to send a spark through his senses, causing them to feel both heat and ice simultaneously.

That wasn't important, though, because Hidan wasn't gay. He never would be, so anything more than a casual friendship between him and the other boy wouldn't last. Or, on the more negative side, it would be built upon lies. Right? There was no attraction between him and Kakuzu. Absolutely none. But, if that were true, why would he be obsessing over the matter?

Groaning loudly, Hidan pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to pacify his racing thoughts. No, he didn't like Kakuzu like he would a pretty girl, but he did care about the Asian's feelings, and he felt bad for hurting them. So, he would have to apologize to the overly-sensitive-yet-lovable foreigner. Satisfied with his reason and his plan, the cult member pushed a button on his beloved stereo and ignored the voice in the back of his mind that suggested that he was in denial.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu sat upright in a hard, poorly-cushioned chair as he watched his father, who was asleep in a hospital bed, breathe in and out. He had managed to earn the privilege of entering the ICU room only after tons of debating and persisting with a variety of doctors, nurses, and specialists, and because of this he was very careful to be on his best behavior and avoid any other skirmishes. Additionally, he was sure that the hospital hadn't forgotten about the murdered physician; even more of a reason to keep a low profile.

Tenting his fingers in his lap and rhythmically tapping them against one another, the young deviate couldn't help but let the guilt thrive inside of his psyche; he could have easily killed his father, and not only would there have been legal repercussions, he'd have to live with it on his conscience for the rest of his life. He could have easily condemned himself to a fate worse than death. He could have easily—

He shook his head a few times to stop his train of thought. He could have easily done a lot of things, but there was no point in dwelling on any of that when there were tasks at hand to focus on; like dealing with Hidan and patching things up with his dad. He couldn't afford to have his mindset stuck in the past.

Takeshi stirred a few times in the hour, but only once, the last time, did he actually wake up and acknowledge his son's presence. "Well, look who we have here," he greeted sourly, blankly staring in Kakuzu's direction. "What brings you here?"

The son changed his visual focus several times before settling on one of the monitoring machines that the patriarch was hooked up to. "I was worried," he said simply, "and I wanted to apologize."

The older man laughed dryly at his offspring's statement. "Apologize? Kakuzu, that's all you ever do. Why can't you be more asser—"

"Look, I'm apologizing whether you like it or not. Take it or leave it," he growled bluntly, adhering to his father's unfinished request. "Why can't _you _just accept that I'm naturally apologetic?"

Takeshi rolled his eyes and grinned, though it resembled more of a smirk than a smile. "Point taken," he allowed, letting the disrespectful remark go. "But, I hope you realize that I'm not going to forgive you for helping my prey escape."

"Of course you won't," Kakuzu replied stoically, unsurprised by his father's reactions. "You won't because you're cemented in your beliefs, as am I. Therefore, I act upon said beliefs just as much as you do, and I won't stand for any violations." He added with a smile, "Just another great quality I inherited from my dad."

Following the avowal came silence, which fell only to be broken by a nurse informing them that visiting hours were over. Kakuzu bid farewell and left the incarceration building promptly, but his ever-active brain was still working. He came to the conclusion that he could never confide in his father the incident that had happened earlier that day. Not only did his father distrust him, but he was also excessively religious and wouldn't take lightly to the though of his son being gay. The boy would just have to be closeted from then on. Not that it would be a problem, since his forbidden love was unrequited, but it was always good to have a gameplan.

Hanging his head as he continued home, Kakuzu drew in a deep breath and held it. The school week was starting the next day, and in light of the oh-so-convenient reality that his and Hidan's classes matched, it would be tremendously difficult to avoid the opinionated young Jashinist, especially since they had a huge field trip coming up; it was a so-called "fun day" which included one hell of a long bus ride to God-knows-where, games of sorts, incessant socializing and a dance during the last hour. Biting the inside of his cheek, he let out the breath and kicked a rock down the sidewalk. The universe didn't seem very fond of him lately.

* * *

I dedicate this chapter to my dearest buddy Kristal, who helped me figure out that last paragraph. :D


	15. Flora and the Concept of Amnesty

I have no better excuse for the lateness of this chapter than "life kicks my ass," for various reasons. Hey, at least I updated now instead of two months from now.

* * *

Hidan's eyes had a pressure about them as he lay in vain, waiting for sleep; though they felt weird open, they felt even weirder closed, and as a result slumber would not come. It was the third time it had happened this week: he would wake up in a cold sweat accompanied by intense breathing in the middle of the night, only to find himself exhausted and unable to drift back into his subconscious. Ever since the incident with Kakuzu…

No, he chastised himself, pulling the covers completely over his head. The fact that he was having trouble sleeping had nothing to do with the Jashin-cursed heathen. It could have something to do with how he was eating, or with the amount of homework he had been getting, but not Kakuzu. Rolling over in frustration yet again, Hidan shoved his face into his pillow and exhaled forcibly. Maybe a lack of air would knock him out for the rest of the night.

The school days that followed the restless nights weren't much better. The zealot felt himself phasing out in class, often missing the most important part of the lecture in the process, and being at a complete loss when called upon to answer questions. He knew this was a direct effect of not getting enough sleep, but it appeared that the matter couldn't be helped at the moment.

In addition, the school days were much quieter and lonelier without Kakuzu hanging around and coercing interpersonal contact. As much as he hated to admit it, Hidan missed the Asian and the company he provided; without even the most trivial conversation at some point of the day, the environment took a malevolent undertone—the school itself was bigger, the staircases taller, the teachers stricter. If it wasn't for the fact that he was used to unknown places due to his foster child status, the young cult member would have gone insane in two days at most.

Kakuzu himself was all but present in Hidan's life, since the green-eyed boy had made a point to avoid the other using every technique in the book, no matter how lengthy and time-consuming. He couldn't understand why the other wouldn't stop to hear his apology out; how did Kakuzu expect the matter to be settled if he never gave it a chance _to _settle? Fuck, the zealot knew that gay guys were touchy and frail, but he didn't know that they left issues open-ended and seething, too. Talk about having to handle someone with kid gloves.

Sighing exhaustedly and throwing himself into his homeroom seat four days into the tiresome week, Hidan stared idly at a spindly teacher he had never seen before tape a few pieces of paper to the blackboard against the side wall. "GROUP ASSIGNMENTS," the bold serif-font lettering announced, as an uncalled-for reminder metaphorically smack him in the face. They were probably for that field trip the entire 7th-grade class was due to go on the following day, the one that had demanded forms be turned in months in advance. He had completely forgotten about it.

The cult member strained his vision farther, only to confirm his fears; he and Kakuzu were in the same group and would be required to stick together. Hidan groaned silently, massaging his face while trying to figure out what the fuck he was going to do. He needed to talk to Kakuzu, yes, but the group would consist of five other people, and there was no way in hell that Hidan was going to mention even half of what happened day before where his peers could eavesdrop.

He racked his brain, making an excessive attempt to remember what had been printed on the informational flyer he received some time ago. It had something about a dance at the end of the day, where all the separate clusters of students would merge and cram into some sort of gymnasium. It would be relatively easy to isolate Kakuzu there, since the loud music and self-absorption of today's youth would keep them from wanting to overhear their conversation. Also, he and Kakuzu could go into the hallways or bathrooms and speak there, providing they were vacant, and talk without having to yell over bass beats. Meeting outside was another option, and possibly the most viable.

With an absolutely flawless plan in tow, he laid his head onto the desk in front of him and breathed deeply to calm his anxiety. It would all work out, he told himself, it would.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu gaped blankly into the distance as he walked to school that day; he was late again, but he didn't care. One more tardy and a half-hour detention at the end of the day wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and, come to think of it, no individual mattered either. If one person were to die, the world wouldn't stop revolving around the sun, the ozone wouldn't suddenly disappear, and the ice caps wouldn't simultaneously melt.

He had been having thoughts like these for a while, ever since the incident with Hidan, and he supposed it was his way of coping. So he was rejected by an immature little preteen, so what? For whatever prideful reason, Kakuzu was determined to keep his head up and show that overly-confident little bastard that he was over him, that his world had not stopped turning just because he encountered a minor setback.

When Kakuzu arrived at the school, the faculty stationed near the front door gave him another detention pass and told him to hurry to second period. He rolled his eyes as he continued down the hallway to his locker; yeah, he would _most definitely _make haste to attend a class he didn't like. That made perfect sense.

The rest of his day went by rather smoothly. Since his daydreams and contemplations no longer consisted of how to acquire the attention of one person, he found it easier to understand and remember what was taught in class. There was a hint of childishness in his actions, though, because he made a point to give Hidan the cold shoulder. That kid had brought it upon himself, and Kakuzu would not tolerate the rudeness or crassness that the other boy had shown him. This was the best way to show Hidan exactly what he meant, he deduced, in view of the fact that the cult member didn't listen and Kakuzu did not possess the patience to explain himself to someone who refused to pay attention.

As he walked into the detention room he had been assigned to after the final bell had rung, he noticed a few pieces of Xerox paper taped to the wall, all of them with "GROUP ASSIGNMENTS" across the top in a bold, large font. Kakuzu strolled over and stared at them for a few moments, reluctant to read. He knew they were for the field trip taking place the next day, and he was fairly sure that he and Hidan would be in the same group because of their similar surnames.

His worries were confirmed with a single glance at the "T" section of the last paper he looked at, and he sighed as he went over to the desk he would be forced to sit in for the next thirty minutes. Kakuzu's anger flared a bit deep within his chest; God damn those teachers and their aptness to categorized things by alphabetical order. Now the zealot would have many chances to pester him and feebly attempt to apologize, which was not welcome in the least. Kakuzu didn't want to deal with him anymore, and the incident was both a reason and an excuse for his newfound scorn.

Once his punishment was fulfilled, he took an alternative route home; his father wasn't around to scold him if he came back late, and there was no harm in hanging out in the park for a few minutes, either.

Walking down the gravel path that wound through the crabgrass-laden field, Kakuzu caught a break in the almost monochrome green that the park consisted of in the corner of his eye; when he approached it, he saw it was a small patch of sunflowers. He bent down to investigate them further, cupping one of them in his hand and analyzing the textures and color variants that gave the flower its three-dimensional look. An image flashed in his head for a split second, and he winced slightly when he recognized who it was. Somehow, a picture of Hidan smiling had popped up before his eyes, reminding him of how sincerely the young Jashinist had tried to comfort him when he had confined himself in protest of his parent's bickering.

Letting go of the sunflower, Kakuzu stood up and headed back to his house. One instance of kindness could not and would not make up for what Hidan had done, or the pain, confusion, and humiliation he had caused.

He proceeded to call the hospital upon returning home, but the secretary only repeated what she told him every time he called—that Takeshi was making a steady recovery and that he would be sent home when he was deemed well enough. Frustrated with the scripted response, he demanded, "Can I at least _talk_ to him?" Knowing his father as well as he did, Takeshi would definitely fill him in on every gory detail.

The receptionist was caught off guard, apparently, because it took her a few second to counter. "Sir," she began, unsure of her own voice, "that's not allowed."

Kakuzu slammed the phone back on its wall mount. Not allowed? Bullshit. Those fucking quacks were hiding something. Of course, he wasn't at liberty to do anything about it, for fear of attracting unwanted authoritarian attention and landing both he and his father in jail.

Exhaling heavily, he threw himself onto the living room couch and turned the TV on. Channelsurfing aimlessly, remote in hand, he gave a bored hum from deep in his throat. Without his dad home to provoke conflict and a love interest to obsess over, his life was extremely dull. There was the field trip to look forward to, he mused, but unless he could keep Hidan at bay for six hours, it would be a hell on earth. Perhaps the other boy would have sense enough to keep away from Kakuzu, but that wasn't likely, given his history.

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan lay with his pillow over his head, trying to catch up on the sleep he lost at night. He wasn't having any luck, however; he was too restless. But, he'd been itching to take a nap all day, so why couldn't he fall asleep now? Karma's a bitch, he ruminated.

He blew out slowly, making a small whistling sound as a familiar face appeared in the back of his mind for at least the fifth time that day: a vulnerable, visibly hurt Kakuzu, covering his eyes with his bangs as he made his way out of Hidan's room, defeated. The image always made Hidan a little depressed, though he had no idea why. That faggot got what was coming to him, and the young zealot shouldn't feel remorseful at all.

He may have exaggerated a bit; maybe he did feel guilty about antagonizing the poor Asian, and Hidan normally found it saddening when he revisited memories that made him feel guilty. So, it was only typical of him to be slightly culpable over Kakuzu's reaction, but it did not signify any special feelings. Or did it? Hidan had no idea anymore.

He repositioned his head on top of his pillow and folded his hands neatly beside it. Something very bad was happening to him, something almost tragic—he started to have doubts about his plans to express regret to Kakuzu, and the more he tried to reason them away the more inevitable they became. With the young zealot's reactions to various things the deviate had done, Hidan had a very slim chance of being taken seriously. Also, even though they would be secluded from everyone else, that didn't mean that people wouldn't be casually walking by; what if the pair was seen, or worse, heard, by someone? The rumor mill would start churning, no doubt, and the both of them would find themselves in a lot of trouble, especially from the homophobic population.

After twenty-odd minutes, Hidan was still fully awake, and with a tired groan he hauled himself off of his mattress and down the stairs to get into the freezer and eat as much ice cream as he could before DeAnn came home. If he couldn't adhere to his basic physical needs, he could at least comfort himself with a sugar-encrusted frozen treat.

His foster mother arrived home after he finished his second bowl of Neapolitan, but she paid no attention to him as she bustled around the kitchen, putting her various bags where they belonged. She wondered aloud, "Where's Terrance?"

"Do I honestly care?" Hidan asked under his breath while setting the spoon he used in the bowl, standing up and stretching. Except for the discussion he and DeAnn had almost a week before, all she cared to think or talk about was her boyfriend; was he content? Did he need anything? Was he comfortable? It sickened Hidan to know that a pig like Terrance could take over DeAnn's thoughts and actions like that.

She let her shoulder-length hair fall into her face as she answered her own question. "Oh, yeah," DeAnn said to herself, "he said he had that family thing to go to today." Unaware of Hidan's presence in the kitchen, DeAnn hurried past him and into the living room. "I have nothing better to do, so daytime television will have to suffice," she babbled on.

The cult member croaked loud enough for the sound to be considered a roar and became immediately pissed off with his foster mother and her recent ditziness. "Hello, DeAnn," he yelled into the other room, literally tossing his ice cream bowl in the sink, "I'm doing good, how about _you?"_

She turned her head so it could look down the short hallway that connected the kitchen to the living room. "Oh, hey, Hidan." DeAnn spoke with a lilt of daydreaminess. "How's it going?"

The boy sneered hatefully as he stomped back up the stairs to imprison himself in his bedroom. "Maybe if you paid attention a little more often," he whispered furiously, "you'd know."

Gritting his teeth and slamming the door behind him, Hidan fell face-first onto his bed. Jashin damn that negligent foster mother and her piglike boyfriend (or her boyfriendlike pig; he hadn't decided yet.) Who the hell did she think she was, blowing off her responsibilities just to fantasize about Terrance? Aggravated, Hidan buried himself under his bed's covers and lay with his back to the ceiling. Folding his arms across his brow, he fell asleep with a single curse in his mind: _Damn it all to hell and back._

Hidan thrashed and writhed on his bedroom floor that night, ailed by a severe cramp that enveloped his torso in a debilitating grip. Tears made streams down his cheeks as he mewled softly—this was too much for one person to take. First there was the lack of sleep, then the psychological and physiological side effects of sleep loss (that were nearly as bad as the sleep loss itself), and now this: waking up at fucking three in the morning with pains that crippled him so much that he could hardly keep on his bed. Jashin was obviously trying to tell him something.

"My God, my God," he wailed, barely able to form the words, "Jashin-sama, please. I understand. I understand completely. Please stop this."

It must have been obvious that he was lying, because the cult god did not let any kind of solace pierce through this sting, the bad kind of ache, so different from the rapture of the sacraments. "Please, God," he pleaded quietly, "if you won't stop the punishment, then show me what I need to do to reconcile." Instantly after that, pictures of Kakuzu materialized before his eyes: of the boy crying, of him furious, and one of him with a black face, resembling the expression he wore at school the day before.

Flinging himself onto his back, Hidan groped hopelessly at the floorboards; he knew what he had to do. His only option was to apologize successfully—for his own justifications, Jashin-sama wanted them on good terms with one another—if he ever wanted the torture to end. His previous plan was still in effect, it seemed, despite his doubts; he was a follower of the true God, and it was his responsibility to make sure that His wish was carried out.

XXXXXXXXX

Kakuzu actually bothered to arrive on time to school the next day. He didn't know why, but he probably just wanted to go on the field trip—even with constant contact with Hidan muddying up the day, every school-age child loved field trips. It was an underlying psychological common denominator.

He boarded one of the buses parked outside his school's main entrance as he was told and took a seat in the back of the vehicle. He watched as the others behind him sat down in their own choices of seating, and saw nothing of the young cult member until almost everyone had situated themselves; Hidan, appearing as if he had gone through a gauntlet, looked around the bus at all the filled seats, and when he could find no other vacant spots eased himself next to Kakuzu.

The green-eyed boy gave him a passing glance and noticed a few key things about Hidan's body language: the curvature of his back, the amount of space he gave between them, and his downward gaze all suggested that he acknowledged the metaphorical barrier separating them. Kakuzu smiled pleasantly as he turned to stare out of one of the bus's many windows. He was making a point with the fickle little bastard, and perhaps now Hidan would disregard him completely.

Within thirty minutes, the buses had reached their destination, and the students they contained filed out excitably, with the exclusion of Hidan and Kakuzu, who loped out of the large forms of transportation without any sort of visible happiness. Outside the vehicle, their peers buzzed among themselves, dividing themselves into the groups they had been assigned to beforehand. The pair of boys simply followed the crowd as the teachers began to direct the children toward the large park-like campground due north. Not a word had been exchanged the entire bus ride, and at least one of them intended on keeping it that way.

The field trip that everyone had been fussing over turned out to be extremely lame. The activities that the adults raved about were, in reality, several rounds of Frisbee, a few games of jacks and a scavenger hunt, and the student body was more than restless to get to the part with potential, the dance. They were eventually herded into a large brick building, where the soirée was to be held, but as the rest of his year blindly crammed into the event hall Kakuzu made a beeline to avoid the entrance and hide behind a large square thing outside that he assumed to be the heater.

Shooting quick looks every which-way to be sure he hadn't been followed and finding no one, the deviate took a deep breath and slid into a sitting position against the heater. He made it through the day without losing his temper and killing Hidan, and it seemed like the zealot understood the sentiment Kakuzu was portraying. Leaning his head back, he relaxed. The Wicked Witch was out of the picture.

Some time passed before her heard a meek, strained voice whisper "Hi," interrupting the routine _frum _of the heater. Kakuzu looked up, only to find the most unwelcome person possible standing beside him. Doing his best to keep a scowl from appearing on his face the Asian averted his gaze, intent on ignoring the nuisance. "I, uh, haven't seen you around for a while," Hidan carried on.

Kakuzu raised one of his eyebrows slightly and kept his focus straight ahead of him. "Is that so?" he responded, pulling out grass blades from the ground beside him and throwing it back onto the displaced dirt. "I hadn't noticed."

"You know, most people aren't turned—turned on by gay guys playing hard-to-get," the other boy replied, the flow of his speech interrupted by what sounded like a suppressed hiccup. "In that respect, I'm like most people."

Rolling his green eyes, he retorted, "You don't say. I always thought you were a little inhuman freak of nature; it seems I was mistaken."

Hidan put a hand on his chest and feinted heartbreak. "Ah, jeez, that hurts," he teased, kneeling next to his new enemy. "One would think someone like you would be a little more open-minded. Or at least more accepting."

The statement was met with silence, but the cult member continued anyway. "I came to apologize," he voiced, sounding pained by the action. "I…well, I'm sorry—"

"Like hell you are," Kakuzu snapped, standing up and glaring down at Hidan. "You've been nothing but a self-centered jerk for the entire time I've known you, and you've never made any effort whatsoever to correct yourself." He turned around and deliberated a fast-but-not-eager pace. "Apologies are not end-all relationship fixers, Hidan."

The Jashinist rose to his feet as well, extending his arm and grabbing the deviate's hand by two fingers. "Wait," he pleaded, sounding a bit like a sheep. "Please…" Kakuzu did as he was told, and he heard Hidan say in a low, restrained tone, "Maybe apologies are all I know how to do. Maybe…maybe I just…"

Kakuzu yanked his hand away and twisted around to hit the bastard on the breastplate. After the blow had been delivered its recipient had no choice but to step back, and his head snapped upward as he came close to doubling over. He squeaked, holding his stomach, "What was that for?"

"To keep you away," he replied sharply, starting to walk away again. "Stop bothering me. I'm done; I don't want to hear any more of your half-hearted excuses and I _don't_ want to put up with you."

Kakuzu heard Hidan fall to his knees and squeal as his nerves presented him with a sort of torture, and he couldn't help the smirk that stretched across his face. Something about having a dominant position in the situation satisfied him, and he had the urge to go back and finish beating up the cult member, though he ignored it. Causing unnecessary trouble was not on his agenda that day.

He didn't see Hidan again until the end of the day, after most of the hallways emptied. The white-haired boy limped down the rows of doors, noticeably sore and clutching his left side, heading toward his locker placed a few inches beside Kakuzu's stance. Once Hidan was within close range of his target, however, his legs buckled and he fell square into Kakuzu's arms. A shock wracked Hidan's body, and he immediately pushed on the other boy's chest to distance himself, but his upper-body strength failed and he only slumped into the other's grip more. "Oh, shit," he murmured weakly, "oh, shit."

Kakuzu set Hidan back in a standing position with a shift of his weight, and he watched as the Jashinist shook frightfully. "Dear Jashin," he mumbled, holding his head as tears rolled down his cheeks. He obviously understood the rage Kakuzu expressed toward him. "Oh, good God…"

The other boy took hold of Hidan's shoulder when he listed to the left. "Are you okay?" he asked, now guilty of what he had done. Getting a message across was one thing, but destroying the poor kid's physical health was quite another. He sincerely hoped he hadn't damaged the little guy too much, for Hidan's sake.

The child shook a bit more, swallowed, and looked up at Kakuzu with saline-coated amethysts that portrayed the weary horror and agony he was dealing with. "No," he said delicately, gasping as he inhaled, "I don't think I am."

The young deviate watched as his peer teetered from side to side, trying to balance himself while attempting to persuade his lament to cease. Kakuzu eyed the poor boy with sympathy—a reaction that was completely involuntary—and felt a tug at his heart. He had done this; it was his fault that Hidan couldn't stand on his own feet. (More accurately, his detestation was at fault.) A combination of responsibility and commiseration crushed his previous thoughts of vengeance and odium; amends needed to be made, and soon.

Hidan lowered his eyes and sniffed, wiping off whatever rivulets had been made; meanwhile, Kakuzu put his hand under the other boy's chin and brought it back up to his own eye level. "Well, then," he offered, "I guess you'll need me to escort you home."

XXXXXXXXXX

Hidan limped down the sidewalk, keeping Kakuzu's arm in a tight clasp for balance. His cheeks resisted as he directed the deviate, turn-by-turn, to his house, despite the fact that Kakuzu had been there multiple times before. For some reason, he thought it would relieve the awkwardness of silence somewhat. "Left at the next corner."

He cringed again as another abdominal pain shot across his ribs; they had been going on all day, the contractions, and with every convulsion he could feel his energy depleting. It was miraculous that the Asian had volunteered to help—without it, the zealot probably would have collapsed and died in the school.

The heathen himself wasn't any more open than he was all week: his expression was still a hard stare, though it had softened slightly, and he kept his focus directly in front of him. Well, of course he wouldn't be any friendlier; he had already made it clear that Hidan had overstepped the line with his constant mood swings and inconsistent affability. He was only helping out of pity.

As they approached another intersection, the cult member gave an order: "Turn right, and go down the street five houses or so. Then we'll be at my place." He pulled himself closer to his escort's bicep; even if he didn't actually like Hidan anymore, having Kakuzu ambling alongside him gave him a sense of support.

The pair reached the front door minutes after they made the turn, and Hidan let go of Kakuzu's arm and stepped back, searching through his pocket for a house key. Another spasm foiled his plans, sending him straight into the other boy's hold and crying silently. He was going to be killed, for sure; if Kakuzu's dad could come up with such a devastating scheme as he had before, imagine what a child, with its unbound imagination, could do! Falling into his arms repeatedly was definitely _not _a way to stay out of harm's way.

Once against the green-eyed child eased the other into a stance, but this time he held Hidan up by his waist. Sighing as he laid his own forehead against the fragile acolyte's, Kakuzu closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "Perhaps," he practically hummed, "I could forgive you one more time."

Hidan smiled, the grin becoming bigger with every passing second, and dug his nose into the crook of the deviate's neck, made larger because of his slouched pose. The pressure in his torso lifted as he articulated in an undertone, "I'd like that. I really would."

* * *

Why hallo there, fluffy ending. We meet again.


End file.
